My Life So Far (Abridged)
Aged 7:
I decided to try on step-sister Sarah’s ballet kit because I wanted to go to ballet like my sisters, and remember the feeling it gave me. Remember feeling how right it felt and the happiness it brought me. Although, I knew it was something I had to do in secret so I felt sad about that. I then started to wear Sarah’s clothes when no one was in the room. It just felt like something I had to do and I had the need to do it. Aged 11: I remember the boys in class talking about having erections and I felt like the only one who couldn’t do that. However, I think most of the time they were just pretending. There was a lot of banter about boys telling each other they had erections.
I remember taking and wearing my moms clothes because my sisters would not fit me anymore and locking myself in the bathroom with them. This was when everyone was in the house. I felt isolated and very lonely in the fact I felt I was the only one that felt the need to wear women’s clothes. Told my best friend, James, about it all and he was fine with it. Everyone at school picked on James because he was not so clever and was also adopted. Somehow I think I convinced him to wear women’s clothes as well. I think I was desperate not to feel alone and he went along with what I said. I talked about women’s clothes alone with James and he even would wear women’s clothes under his school uniform. There was even one point when he was caught and sent to the Head Teacher. I was also summoned I think because I seem to remember James must have told them that I had told him to wear women’s clothes. Of course I denied every involvement and they believed me. I think I was trying to live out my own life through James. Aged 12: Had three operations in the space of a year and as a consequence was unable to attend physical education at school. I put on a lot of weight at this point. Was still dressing in my mom’s clothes. Seem to remember going through puberty at this point. Developed a chest maybe because of being overweight and remember hoping that I was in fact developing breasts. Externally I remember feeling very embarrassed but internally I was very proud and happy with my breast development. I remember thinking sometimes that I was actually turning into a woman. These have never disappeared. Aged 13: When looking through the TV Guide came across a program about Brazilians who had undergone sex changes. I remember setting the video to record it because it was past my bed time. When I watched it I remember feeling intrigued and the realisation that it was possible to “change sex”. I don’t know whether I misheard my mom on the phone but I am sure I heard her talking to someone on the phone and mentioning that she was concerned that I had recorded a program about Brazilian transsexual prostitutes. I remember thinking that she must have seen what I had recorded on the video. Aged 14: Was allowed to come home alone to the empty house after school. Would spend most of my time dressed in my moms clothes until my mom came home from work with my sister. I remember when it was dark walking around the housing estate dressed in my mom’s clothes. I wanted to get further and further out into the open and be free of the secret. I remember once my mom asked me why I had been in her wardrobe because she had noticed things had been moved around. I came up with the excuse that I was using it as a hiding place. No more was said on the subject. Another time she arrived back from work and saw me with her wardrobe door open from the back garden through the window. I remember that being an awkward situation and don’t remember how I got out of it. I think she knew exactly what I was doing because I was too obvious but I think she didn’t confront me or force me to confess.
Aged 15: My best friend asked me whether I masturbated and had never and even didn’t know how to. I had an idea because I had read in a children book of growing up. I remember when I found out how to do it. However, I remember not having many ideas about how to become sexually aroused. I remember realising how beautiful dressing in women’s clothes made me feel. I realised that this feeling of being beautiful could also change into feeling of being sexy. I remember the feeling of being attractive and beautiful and sexy allowed me to become sexually aroused.
I remember not being able to become sexually aroused by thinking about women sexually but rather by dreaming about being physically female. I don’t remember any thoughts of being with a man but neither do I remember about any thoughts about being with a woman whilst dreaming of being a woman. I feel that my fantasies where almost trying to avoid any connection with men although they seemed to lean that way.
Aged 15/16: Remember staying over my best friends house a lot and we eventually began masturbating together in the same room. We shared a common interest in famous women and so masturbated. I remember finding it very difficult to become aroused by “heterosexual” thoughts about these women. Instead because I felt pressurised by my friend to masturbate and reach orgasm I found the only way I could become sexually aroused was to imagine physically being that woman.
I felt my friend was more virile than me and I felt pressurised because I couldn’t become sexually aroused enough. I remember being somewhat intrigued by my friends penis and a couple of times had quick looks at it when we were masturbating. I wasn’t sure whether I just wanted to know what his looked like or I wanted to actually see it. I wasn’t attracted to my friend but I couldn’t help sometimes glance at his penis without him knowing.
I remember once asking my friend whether he had ever worn women’s clothes and he told me that once when he was very little he had taken a dress off a large teddy bear and put it on. He didn’t do anything again after that. And then after what he told me I lied that I had done once and never again.
We had a lot of free time in the Sixth Form at school and I spent a lot of time in the library in town. I remember looking for books on transsexuality and finding only one. But I remember borrowing this book two or three times and reading it cover to cover. It was almost like a consolidation to me and made me feel less alone. It was just a relief to read that someone had felt the same as I feel and had wrote their own story about it.
I remember the first time I got onto the internet and the first thing I searched for was information about transsexuality. Maybe on a negative note I came across photographs of pre-operative transsexuals. From then on I knew I was very attracted to these people in the photos. I was very confused why I was attracted to these people. I think now that partly the attraction was envy and I realise now that from events after this that it is very likely that I was attracted to penises yet could hide away and suppress the idea. I think it could have been a way of expressing my unknown bisexuality. I know that I was not attracted or aroused by photographs of vaginas.
The internet was when I started to find out there were people that felt the same way as me.
I began going into charity shops and ladies clothes shops and trying clothes on. I didn’t seem to feel much embarrassment and acted like it was just normal. I think I became so desperate to wear ladies clothes that I would even steal them from shops. I think this was partly because I was so ashamed, I had no money and in a way I wanted to get caught. I wanted someone to do something I couldn’t do and that was tell the world about myself.
I also started to wear the clothes I had bought from the shops during the day after my late lessons. I would walk around a housing estate near school in the dark. One time I got really scared and someone shouted out “pervert” at me. That hurt a great deal because I couldn’t help how I felt. It was just natural to me. I began to wonder what I was doing was perverted. From this point on I started to feel very ashamed.
Aged 18: My dressing in ladies clothes continued at university and this time I didn’t have to be so secret. I remember going home for the summer break and my mom finding my ladies clothing in my boxes of belongings. I told her a lie that I had found them in my room before I had moved in and was too embarrassed to throw them out in case someone believed they were my clothes. Nothing more was said about the subject although I wish I mom had beaten the truth out of me.
Moved in to a shared house with my friend in the second year of university and found less opportunities to be secret. I discovered cannabis half way through this year.
Aged 20: Did a year in Somerset for my university work placement. I have very good memories of this time. Did not have the burning necessity to wear ladies clothes coupled by the intimacy of my living conditions. I remember going into Taunton alone and going into shops again and trying on ladies clothing. I also remember we all found someone’s old clothes in a closet in our lounge. The guys were messing around with them and trying them on over their clothes. I did not do this because I could not see the funny side, had no power in me to pretend to act how they were acting. Afterwards, when the situation was over and the clothes went back into the closet I took some items and hid them in my room.
Aged 21: I started my final year at university and found it very stressful. I remember the only way I could escape the stress for the first half was to smoke cannabis and wear ladies clothes in the secret of my own room. I had some very strange encounters while under the influence of cannabis. I began to feel very acutely that my inner feelings were being projected onto the outside. I felt like I changed when I was under the influence. I felt like I could no longer act out my persona well enough. It felt like I was transparent. I felt like the cannabis made me become natural and when I was like this I felt very “girly”. I think my best friend did not help in this situation because I really do think that he knew me through and through and always treated me as a female. I began to feel like he was treating me like I was his girlfriend.
I think my suspicions were found out when we were out in a nightclub. I had told him that I could no longer cope or deal with the nightclub so we had to go home. It was because I got very scared because I felt I had lost self control and was losing my persona. I freaked out when I felt I forgot what I was doing and I very felt attracted to my friend. On the way home in the taxi I was very flustered and my friend teased me all the way home. When I got out of the taxi he pinched my buttocks and that just shocked me into sobriety.
The second time he freaked me out was when we were very high on cannabis at his house and in after watching a film he asked me to kiss him. I automatically said that was not how I was like and refused. We said nothing more about that and went to bed. Although, most of the night before I fell asleep I couldn’t stop thinking what he said and I wanted so badly to get into his bed with him and make love with him. Aged 22: Started to look for work but found it very difficult. After seven months was offered a job working at Mcdonalds. I existed there for some time and was eventually offered a promotion to a managerial position. The prospect of more money tempted me and I started working as a manager. My gender dysphoria became very bad again at this time. I saw myself losing track of who I really was. I felt people were requiring me to be someone I was not. I obviously looked deep inside myself to help fight this conflict and stumbled on a deep crack again.
I think I was going deeper and deeper into who I was as a person and bringing up things that caused me some strife. I even got to a point when I found out how to buy female hormones off the internet. I knew that taking such drugs was dangerous yet it was something I needed to do pretty promptly. I had expected to either reject the effects or feel better with the effects. When I started taking the hormones and found that I felt better.
Some time later near the end of my career at Mcdonalds a new person started at our restaurant as a manager. He was not so liked by the other managers and I remember befriending him to make him feel better. Everyone was into online messengers at the time and they were all swapping nicknames. I decided to tell a few people my online nickname and we did chat on the internet occasionally.
When I came back from holiday at work the manager called me into his office and told me that someone had printed some photographs of someone that looked like me. It was certainly photographs of me dressed in ladies clothes. Of course I denied it was me and said it was a nasty joke. I guessed that the manager I had befriended earlier in the year had looked up my name on the internet and found these photographs of me. My time at work was then very difficult especially because most of my colleagues were around the age of 16. The other managers also made my life pretty difficult at the same time.
I had decided by this time to go to the doctor in my home village to seek some help. I had specifically asked to see the lady doctor because I knew she would be only one I would feel comfortable with. I had my appointment and she told me that she would help me find someone to talk to about my issues.
I became very down and despaired of my continuing situation in which I had been placed. I think this must have come through into my home life as well. I came home one day from work with my mom distraught. She had seen me depressed and tried to help by changing the appearance of my room. However, in the process she had found all the ladies clothes I had bought. She confronted me with this and I told her that it was just something I needed to do. I try to bring the subject to a quick close and I feel my mom aided in this to an extent. I knew then that it was much easier to allow my mom that I was just a crossdresser. Though, the fact that I wanted her to think I was just a crossdresser ended up emphasising the fact that I was not just a crossdresser and my feelings ran very deep.
Things got a little better with my mom and nothing was said over the next couple of weeks. However, another incident occurred where my mom found the female hormones I had been taking. This time things got very difficult between my mom and me. She explained that she had lost trust in me and was very confused. I tried to tell her more or less how I felt though it was very difficult. It was made worse by my mom’s reaction to the situation. I wanted her to stop being upset so I promised to stop crossdressing and the hormones altogether. Nothing more was said until I was 24 and living and studying for my Masters degree in Reading.
Aged 24:
The time came when I had a referral to a doctor in London care of my GP at home. I told my mom and she agreed it was the right move. She offered to come with me to the hospital for the appointment and I agreed gladly. I had been living with relative comfort and then regurgitated everything so that I could then deal with it.
We went down to Paddington Hospital together on the train. I was very nervous when we arrived and when we got there I had a big surprise. I had been referred to a gynaecology clinic. I had been confused about why this had been done but went ahead thinking there likely to be some explanation. When I went through into the waiting room I felt very surprised and confused. For the only people in the waiting room were women and there were many waiting there. I saw the consultant and to my extreme disappointment I found out that he couldn’t really help me. He did offer to refer me to someone else and I felt better from this.
I waited several months for his referral to appear but nothing ever did and then I lost faith in it all. I started to let go of the feelings I had unearthed again and let them fall back into their box inside my soul, waiting to reap havoc another time.