Fuck History! Or, alternately, Coming Out

Well, not so vehement as all that.

I got tired of dredging up the past (though I do have a lot more hints that make me slap myself in the head and have REGRETS for my own obliviousness - let's not talk about the comic I drew which I may someday be convinced to post or god forbid continue) and today I will be talking about the present, which was my goal from the get-go.  I had to set the scene, though.  You understand.

The day or two after I found out, I told my dad.  He is an amazing man.  He has had, by far, the best reaction of anyone I've told so far.  We took the dog out for a walk and I told him I had gender dysphoria.  We're alike, him and I.  Put a fancy medical name on it and it starts to make more sense.  We also crave the printed word when we're trying to cope.  While I can't exactly excuse him for the "Dear Abby" articles left on the counter about coming out as a lesbian, I can't blame him either.  His daughter has always been a little weird, and while the topic wasn't technically correct, it was in the neighborhood.  Just 3 letters to the left.  (I'll give you a minute.  There ya go.)

We wandered for a while and I told him all the stuff I'd found out, and how I was probably 80-90% sure I was trans.  I told him I wasn't changing my name yet, and I wouldn't be asking any drastic pronoun shifts for a while (at least until the transition is obvious) and that I would share any research I found with him.  He told me he always knew I was a little different and that whatever I am, he loves me.  And that he would follow my lead in regards to my stepmother.

I told her, which was... frustrating but not devastating.  She didn't, and doesn't understand fully, but I'm not really interested in her understanding.  While I was telling her, dad was on the internet, looking helpful definitions up on wikipedia and commenting on interesting facts pertaining to transgender.  Love my dad.  She was quiet for a few days (which was a relief) but has now resumed speaking to me and hasn't mentioned it since.

I'm fine for now with being seen as female.  There's a lot of changes that have to be made before I pass as a man more than just by accident.  Knowing that my mind is struggling to reconcile the contours of my body with the solidity it expects helps so much.

T, Top, Bottom

My understanding of the medical aspects of female to male (FTM) transsexualism is split into three categories.  Hormone therapy, top surgery, and bottom surgery.   These things are around to alleviate the gender dysphoria that comes with being a transgendered individual.  I believe that each person has different primary... triggers for their dysphoria, and thus a different way of ranking the medical options in order of preference.

Hormone Therapy:
  Injecting testosterone into one's meaty bits (thighs or arse) which then causes most of the subtle changes.  Facial and body hair growth, vocal change, fat moving from hips and thighs to stomach, growth of erectile tissue (clitoral growth, basically), growth of Adam's apple and other such manly attributes.

Top Surgery:
  Getting rid of the boobies.  There are two main variations on this, called 'keyhole/peri-areolar' and 'double-incision/bilateral mastectomy'.   The first, suitable for the smaller chested, involves the nipples and pulling the breast tissue out through small incisions in the areolae.  The other option is to remove the tissue through large incisions beneath the breasts, which is then usually (but not always) followed by nipple grafts or nipple reconstruction, to get them in the right place.  These processes are performed by reconstructive surgeons.

Bottom Surgery:
  There's LOTS of options here.  Basically, there are techniques that use what you've got down there, techniques that use extra donor flesh, techniques with machinery inside, etc.  Basically, there's 'metoidioplasty' and 'phalloplasty'.  Metoidioplasty is the construction of a small penis from the hormonally enlarged clitoris and skin from the labia.  Phalloplasty involves using skin from the abdomen, thigh, or forearm to construct a tube of flesh that when finished, resembles the average male penis.  There are about a billion different ways to do either of these, and they can be combined with hysterectomies and other procedures that reduce the female aspects of the bits.



Personally, I'm all for getting rid of the boobs and starting testosterone therapy.  Sign me up.  I'm a little more skeptical about the bottom surgery.  I feel like... if I'm going to have the ability to enjoy the sexxins, that beats having a big visually obvious penis.  I can get a prosthetic if it's a problem.  There are some amazing prosthetics out there, which I'm sure I'll discuss in a future article.

Gender Dysphoria, and the Euphoria of Knowing

I hit puberty at 13, I think.  Before that, I was a lanky, long-limbed thing, wild and freckled.  I could slip through the woods of the northwest quickly.  There wasn't an ounce of fat to be found on me.  I was pleased with my scrawny form.  I chased frogs and cats and dogs and played for hours with the neighbor.  I loved baseball.

I was at a week long horse camp when I found blood in my underwear.  Picture if you can, for a moment only, how you might feel if a dreaded transition from 'child' to 'Woman' might play out in such a situation.  To me, it was something that would happen to other people and the stark reality of the pain and mess that was getting my first menstrual cycle put me into shock.  I called my mother in tears, begging her to come get me.  She refused, taking it in stride like the mellow hippie woman she has always been.  The other girls there, most of whom had already started their periods were anything but supportive.  There was a day still until I was able to go home, so I stuffed my skivvies with toilet paper and suffered through.  I don't remember the rest of the week, except the horror of having bloodied paper fall from my pant leg while my dad was picking me up.

From there, it only got more horrifying.  Breasts!  Now, please understand.  On anyone else, I would love my breasts.  They're shapely, lovely, still fairly perky for someone nearing 30.  But they're big.  They're in the way.  They make running a challenge.  Even binding them down chafes.  They're heavy.  They've increased in cup size steadily since they started growing.  Not only that, but my hips swelled.  I still bang into doorways because my mind is navigating for a body much slimmer than I am.  

When I look in a mirror, I see two sacks of fat where my smooth chest should be.  I see mounds and swells where it should be planed and toned.  I see a narrow waist, a stubby torso.  I see massive thighs that should be flat and muscular.  And every time I see that, it makes me sad.  Naked or clothed, the shape of me is wrong.  No amount of working out would make the hips narrow or the breasts go away.  

This is gender dysphoria.  When your mind expects to see something in a mirror that it doesn't see, specifically related to your assigned sex.  It's been a long time of not having a name for it, and of being endlessly depressed because of a line of 'normal' reasons.  Being called 'ma'am'.  Doors being opened for me.  Having to go through life not being able to see my midsection past the bags of fat.  All of those things, and the hundreds of other little things that happen during a day, that confirm that I am not what I feel like I am.  All of those things, like a waterfall, a pile of straw on a camel's back.

Now that I know what it is, now that it has a name, I can fight the dysphoria.  It's no longer inexplicable sadness.  It has reason.  I've been in a great state since I found out, delighted with the identification of what the depression has meant.  It's partially been understanding that there's a name for my feelings, and partially the realization that there are things that can be done to alleviate the discomfort that's been whittling away at me.

The next steps are therapy, hormone therapy, and surgery.  

History of the World (Mine)

It will become clear if you read all of this blog that I am biologically female.  I have no interest in hiding it at this point, double Ds will do that to a person.  Even though I'm very certainly transgendered, and eventually I will change my physical form to ease the dysphoria, I don't feel like I need to hide who I was.  As of this writing, I am 28 years old, and I have lived as a girl and woman for most of those years.

I'm changing some names around, for the decency factor.  

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I was born in California, into a hippie household.  At one and a half years, my family moved to Washington state, in pursuit of jobs and houses.  I grew up in a small, one-story house with my mom and dad and the various animals we kept.  My life was as thrilling as any child's, full of bugs and kites and swings and adventures in the park.  There was a plum tree that I loved to climb, and eat the plums that had warmed in the summer sun, perching on one of the two big branches that spread like arms.  We had a deck and we could watch the Blue Angels fly against a backdrop of mountains in the summertime.  I was freckled and wild and I loved ponies more than anything ever.  Instead of a sandbox, my parents gave me a dirt pile, in which I carved canyons and mountains, and flattened meadows for my toys to romp in, and made rivers with the hose.

Our house was amazing.  The floor of the den was multicolored, short, uncomfortable carpeting with hopscotch and chess boards and parcheesi boards printed on it.  My room was carpeted in light, sky blue shag, with dark red velvet curtains and white walls.  I had an alphabet poster that had Fox as the X, and a giant cat face poster.  The kitchen was Yellow and Orange and Avocado.  Our mailbox was painted like a zebra, and the first few years of my life were spent being driven about in a rainbow painted Volkswagen Beetle.  There were roach clips hanging in the kitchen, decorated with beads and feathers and upside down medicine cups, the kind that come with cough medicine.  

My earliest memory is just before my fourth birthday.  I remember vividly telling my father that it was my 'fourth birthday eve'.  I was in the bathtub, and I had colored soap crayons and I was making a mess with water all over the floor.  My dad worked, my mom worked sometimes too.  I remember a few babysitters, but nothing shocking happened.  There's the usual gamut of naked baby pictures, naked child pictures, child with dogs, child with friends, child with random petting zoo beasts.  There was little pink or blue to be found in my house.  My favorite stuffed animal was a bear named Lady Snuggles.  She is a dark brown Gund bear, with a V of white on her chest, and I loved her.  I love her still.  She still has a place of honor on my opposite pillow.

I grew up in this hippie house without feeling like a little girl.  I didn't feel much like a little boy, either, but when I was playing with the neighbors, I was always the daddy.  

In my youth, my best friend was named Miranda.  I always thought she was beautiful.  We shared a love for ponies that led to a love for each other, like children love, without thought and without impurity.  Every weekend we could spare we would spend galloping around the house, whinnying and making up elaborate stories centered around our horse toys or ourselves.  One night, when I was 8 or 9, she was sleeping on my floor, and I spent an hour crying, thinking of how much I loved her.  I should have known then.  

I never grew up thinking that men with men and women with women were bad.  I had a wonderful great uncle that had a partner.  I never thought twice about it, and my family never gave me cause to.  I never wondered overly about simple matters like love.  If I, who had been told I was a girl, could love my best friend, who was a girl, why couldn't my uncle love a boy?  I reserved my judgement for those who didn't think ponies were cool.  

I was home schooled from 5th grade through 9th grade.  I spent my days doing homework, then going out and building weapons and training the dogs and cats to do tricks.  

When I was 14, two important things happened.  Star Wars, and the Trip.

First, with the help of my friend Katie, I discovered Star Wars and it changed the course of my life.  It changed the games Miranda and I played.  We were no longer horses, we were people, doing things that people do.  Falling in love, fighting epic battles, being scoundrels and Jedi, and shooting up the Empire.  The way Han and Leia's first kiss played out made my stomach turn somersaults, but I never imagined I was Leia.  I was always, always Han.  

The Trip wasn't just any camping adventure.  My family purchased a fifth wheel trailer and a large Ford F150, and my mother planned out a trip across the nation.  We were gone 13 months.  At the end of the trip, I had been to every state in the country with the exception of Hawaii.  I became a much better friend with my mom, and on a rainy day in Cooperstown, NY, my mom and dad told me they were getting a divorce.  I wasn't devastated, really.  I was sad.  But my parents are fair people, and they let me ask my questions and rant and rail and didn't deviate.  It always seemed that they regarded each other with love laced with faint exasperation, so a little less love and a little more exasperation wasn't a huge change for me.  

I met a lot of people during the Trip, and religiously wrote letters to my friends at home.  THIS WAS BEFORE THE INTERNET WAS A THING, U GUYZ.  We had Dial Up, if we were lucky, and a cell phone was unheard of!  I had to write letters, BY HAND, and send them, WITH STAMPS!  My friends sent their letters to my father, who forwarded them to us whenever we had a few days in one place.  Mom's jobs during the trip were "Drive" and "Pay" and my jobs were "Hitch" and "Level".  Some days we fought forever.  Other days we had a great time laughing together.  

When I got home, things had changed a little.  Miranda was taller, prettier, and I was taller, and... well, prettier, if you like strong jawlines and mullets.  Not my proudest hairstyle.  I went back to public school.  Naturally, as I had missed out on the merciless mockery of middle school, the bullies had to work overtime to catch up.  Instead of dressing like a 'normal' girl, I tended towards baggy clothes.  Jeans that had once belonged to boys.  

I wasn't committed to the choice in clothes, and in my efforts to fit in and figure out who I was, I gave girly clothes a try.  It wasn't bad, aside from occasionally being uncomfortable, so I went with it.  The bullies were less of a problem, anyway.  I cut off my mullet and went with a more conventional girly chin-length style.  I started wearing makeup, sometimes.  I went to the mall.  I talked about boys.  

Meanwhile, my weekends were still spent with Miranda, playing elaborate games of make believe and loving her more every day.  Star Wars passed (though we still loved it) and we got into Pokemon.  We loved the villians, Jesse and James, and our group of friends put together a signing event in character at a local theater when they aired the Pokemon movie.  Miranda was Jesse.  I was James.  Each and every one of our friends believed with all their hearts that James and Jesse were lovers, including Miranda and I.  We started having "in character" parties.  I reveled in being a man, even for an hour or two a night.  It was freeing, and I felt more comfortable with my chest bound than I ever had without.  

The parties started having the effect that one would expect on two people who were pretending to be secret lovers.  The affectations, the secretive glances, the flustered protests we put on to amuse our friends started becoming true.  We weren't just Jesse and James at the parties any more.  It became a game for us.  We would wake each other in the night with conversations held in character, that became less fictional the more time went by.  

One night, we passed out on a fold out couch together, watching TV.  When we woke in the morning it was light, and the house was empty except for us two.  I poked her in the ribs.  She growled the name 'James'.   I cringed back, but only playfully and tickled her.  She was tremendously ticklish.  A scuffle commenced, but I used my superior size to pin her to the couch.  Chest to chest, the moment stretched out, and I leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips.  My stomach flipped, and before it could escalate to something besides friendly affection, I pulled back.  She was breathless, panting, and had clearly been startled by the advance.  I leaned in again, this time kissing her slightly more firmly, and she responded.  Hands in my hair, passionate, incredible kisses.  

That was the start of something amazing.  But the most important thing about it was that I was not in a lesbian relationship.  I wasn't a woman.  At no point was my femininity acknowledged.  She would touch me like she would a man.  Go down on me like she would a man.  I would touch her like she was a woman.  Put my fingers in her, simulate male orgasm.  It was pretend and it wasn't.  We shared a bed on the weekends.  As soon as we'd graduated, we went from sharing a bed on weekends to sharing a bed on every night we could.  We couldn't get enough of each other.  

I remember at one party, she slipped a note into my hand.  I have forgotten the exact wording.  I threw the note away in a fit of anger.  I wish I had kept it.  "Were we alone, I would kiss you and kiss you until your cries for mercy echoed to the stars" was the right sort of sentiment.  I pulled her aside and into her room, pinning her against the door and let her ravage away.  It was romantic, passionate, my heart and body ached for her.  Cliche as it seems, it was exactly what I have missed in so many relationships since then.

I don't think I deserved all of what I got.  I've written about Samara on another blog, and I don't want to waste much breath on her in this one.  But she took what was a good relationship and turned it sour.  She told me that I was a dirty lesbian, a rapist, a molester.  The thought that I was a woman in a relationship with a woman turned me upside down.  It was a fantasy world, I thought, there would be no way I could ever live as a man, or love as a man.  No one else would ever understand like Miranda.  

So I spent eight years trying to be a 'normal' girl.  I spent a lot of time and energy on shaking the title of 'rapist' from my emotional scarring.  It's still there, still makes me go sick to my stomach.  I had relationships with men that ended poorly.  Here and there I had a girlfriend, but nothing long term.  Finally I started something with my friend Jon.  We were good friends, in and out of the relationship, but there was always something that bothered me about the way he treated me.  My logical mind told me, time and time again, that I was being unreasonable and that he treated me perfectly well.  

I couldn't take it any more, just recently.  I broke up with him in mid-March.  On April 11th, 2011, at 11:38pm, I realized I was quite soundly transgendered.  In the last two weeks I've been doing research, finding out all I can on the topic, and understanding more and more about it.  It makes too much sense to ignore.  I broke up with him because he treated me like a lady.  

If I had continued on any longer without realizing it, I may have reached the point of hurting myself within a year.  I had constant, horrible depression that wasn't made any better by any kind of therapy or medication.  I couldn't focus on school or work.  My room, my life, my world was a mess, falling apart.  I was beginning to suffer from panic attacks more and more frequently, over less and less.  I couldn't share any emotions with anyone.  I didn't trust anyone.  My shell of 'normal girl' was so fragile that anyone could break it open, leaving me vulnerable to the agony of self-exploration.

The words 'gender dysphoria' and some research on it led me to realize that was the name for my malaise.  I found some resources and acquired some personal accounts.  I've been reading, madly, and everything I read cements into place what I am more.  I am gender dysphoric.  I am transgendered.  The T in LGBT.  Some day, I will live as a man, full time.  In the meantime, I will continue to study, I will write, I will record my doubts and my changes and my concerns and my rather harsh opinion on bottom surgery.  Maybe someday, I will have a companion who doesn't mind the fact that the wrapping paper doesn't match the goods inside.  

I will still love ponies.  I will still be the person I've grown into over the last 28 years.  But I will be a stronger, more confident, happier person.