The story of my growth and being transgender.
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I ended up getting in my feelings and figured. It’s 4 months now and I’ve been transitioning for a little while now. What exactly has been my focus on life and what have I learned. If I’m being really honest there’s both a lot and not too much these months have taught me.
To start this whole story off I figured I’d go back to the past where I was too afraid to transition. Something popular with tons of transgender people and something I was never really sure I wanted to do.
MY childhood in a nutshell.
Growing up I was pretty well learned in hiding how I felt. I was abused, angry, ADHD (supposedly), and closeted as heck. So much I wasn’t even aware of it. My biggest teacher was me learning how to pretend to be normal and perhaps that's the crux of everything I know in my life.
Growing up as a guy teaches you to hide emotions and focus on only what you can do. Or at least that was the teachings. You cry and you got hit till you stopped. You complain and you’re ignored. My dad and stepmom were very into the idea of doing the old ways of things. Back when it was normal to actually go outside and play. When my friends were still very small in numbers they insisted on doing homework before playing. Perhaps that’s a still thing I can’t say it’s been ages since I’ve been in those situations.
Yet, it makes me reminisce about the weird normality of what I did. I’d go around and act like a guy. It was so evident I had a friend in 6th grade feel like I was failing so badly he offered to help me dress “normal”.
To give clarity imagine early 2k years and how we dressed. Honestly, the whole style was weird. I never wore shorts and hated it when I did. I wore jeans that were faded and typically a dark shirt and my hair as much as I hated it was short. I’d go through phases of growing it out and being forced for it to be cut.
I grew up to love emo music and hardcore rock. I was in and out of halfway houses for anger but they could never tell why I was so angry until I could trust them to not report me to my stepmom. Because that’s how life was, you did anything bad and you got reported.
The childhood lessons that I used as a child.
- Everyone watches what you do.
After I learned I was going to be reported for every little thing by my half-siblings I learned that I was going to have to learn. I had to learn very quickly that everything thing I did was watched. I was taught how to hide my behaviors because people always had their eyes on me.
2. Everyone is ready and willing to judge you.
I felt like everyone's eyes were on me. I would be home and get into trouble whenever I wanted to express how girly I felt by inexplicably stealing their stuff. If I ever behaved girly I was going to be judged incredibly for it and it’d be best to never feel like that.
3. Behave wrongly and you got hit.
I was taught that everything had consequences and if you weren’t always on your best behavior. If you dared to slip up you received severe consequences. I taught myself how to slip up when no one ever looked because they always were.
4. Being gay wasn’t normal.
Before 2012? I think it was when things really started pushing forward I felt like this belief was very prevalent. As a kid, I was shown the Matthew Shepard movie as an example of what not to do. Or that’s how I saw it.
5. Don’t dare to stand out.
Standing out meant being abused and that was a big no-no.
6. Just do whatever it takes to blend in.
In the end all my life I took this to heart. This meant safety and it was something I desperately craved.
The path of finding out I was transgender.
Every little thing I learned as a child ended up being a lie. They made no sense because they were false believes put on by the abuse I suffered. I once asked, did every transgender person suffer from abuse due to being trans? I never really figured that out since its a study still not fully conclusive.
I was the kid who got asked at the age of 4 to play dress up and loved it. I was the kid who got denied the joy of doing it because it wasn’t male so I developed a habit of stealing it to get what I want. I always got jealous of a girl when they were able to wear dresses. I wanted to wear them but I was always denied.
I was the boy who would prefer to be with the girls during recess but knew it would be a bad decision so I decided it was best to at least half act like I wanted to play with them. I chose what was called the manliest of things and made them the only topics of discussion. No matter what I did I was still pretty weird.
My path to finding out I was transgender was when my stealing caught up to me a year before I would have been sent to jail. My life took a major turn as I got sent to a halfway house and eventually told that I was transgender.
I wasn’t that creepy guy who just wore women's clothing for the thrill of it. I was disgusted when the police even claimed that. Yet, it was a fear everyone had. They took me in and explained exactly what I was claiming and taught me that it was normal. That I wasn’t the freak everyone thought I was because everyone always watched.
The first time I finally decided I was going to transition.
The first time I wanted to transition was immediately after finding out. Yet, that was impossible. Being trans wasn’t society approved and I had been so far in the closet I had absolutely no idea what that even meant. I didn’t even know what it meant to be a girl.
If there was one real lesson I learned as a kid it was this. If you weren’t ahead of everyone you got burned. If you didn’t have an answer to everything before it was thought of you were behind.
I thought there had to be an idea as to what being a girl was like.
I thought there was a formula for how to automatically just become a woman and I HAD to be the one to figure it out. I had to know exactly how to pass because nothing else was acceptable. Everything I did had a reason and that was how I operated. I operated like a machine because that’s who I was.
The first time I decided to transition and actually try it out I went to a group for teens who were LGBT. I met people who were trans and realized they didn’t even know. I met a person who told me that not wanting to fully transition meant I wasn’t actually trans.
This was my first time ever thinking about exploring it and I was shut down immediately. I desperately chose the one thing that had worked my whole life after that. I chose to pretend. If they said I wasn’t trans, then I surely wasn’t they knew much better then me after all. If I didn't have a clear reason for doing it I wasn’t ever going to do it. I sure as heck wasn’t going to do it while I had yet to confront my biggest traumas.
So three years went by before I finally felt comfortable enough. At this time gay rights had been in effect for a little while and people were warming up to the idea that LGBT people were normal.
The passing of gay rights.
When gay rights were passed I remembered it clearly. It was the first day when things had drastically shifted. LGBT people had shifted into the spotlight. It was a time where I openly started exploring my gender and came out as gender fluid.
My life moved on as I restarted my journey to being the girl I am now. Everything seemed ok now and I had a reason and right to explore who I was. Even if I was still playing out how I wanted people to see me I at least felt a bit more comfortable until the day passed when someone managed to break down my walls.
By this point, I had already accepted I wasn’t a normal guy and I was ok with that.
The turning point.
I wrote about this once before in a post on my website. I’ll link to it later but a turning point in my life was when a friend said to just try transitioning and if I was unhappy with the feelings it gave I could just stop and go back to my daily life. So, I took the next step and started transitioning. I learned what it would entail and grew so engrossed with the entire process that I looked up so many things just so that I could actually learn.
It was at this point that I felt an internal change occur. Something I feel like everyone around was able to inadvertently notice. I was happier, eager, and had a major mind change. I doubt it was the hormones though.
What has changed in 4 months?
In the beginning, I was impatient. As was rather normal honestly, I feel like my natural state is having high expectations and wanting things to happen as quickly as they can’t.
I gave myself the entire right to drop everything I had learned as a child. I no longer really believed everyone watched me anymore.
In fact, I was pretty conceited in that idea because no one really gives a flying you-know-what about me. I stopped trying to be a people pleaser and instead focused on pleasing myself. I was doing something no one really understood and I was fine with that.
I have been more creative in my endeavors and have started really pursuing the things I enjoy. Still really learning what that means though. I spent so long doing things I thought would make others stay off my back.
Honestly, 4 months in and I’m still dysphoric as hell. I still hate what I see but I give myself the right to do what I want. I dropped down the walls I had on being feminine and being seen as gay instead now I just behave as femininely as I feel as right and refine what’s too much.
I guess in a way that’s whats kinda stayed the same after everything. I’m still kinda analytical but it’s in a way that I feel like will make me happier. I’m still pressed on the idea of passing and not being judged and not everything is better. Yet, in the end everything that was a bludgeon to me as a child, is more like a redemption story to me.
I’m absolutely empowered by my transitioning and still remind myself that I’m rather unique and pretty cool.
Perhaps in a year, I’ll be even freer. I’ve learned it’s really hard to drop every negative thing you taught yourself as a child but in the end, overcoming everything is way more important. Not being beholden to what happened as a child is what I was told was the true strength
I don’t know if I have that or if I’m always as amazing as I like to pretend I am. All I know is that through struggling I’ll be stronger and through transitioning I’ll be happier. I suppose that’s what really matters.
Do what matters to you and don’t be afraid to try new things out. It’s usually only as bad as you allow it to be.
