Some things in our lives seem to be easier to cope with if they're just swept under the carpet. Or left in the closet. Ahem. I learned from my mother that sometimes it seems easier to just stick your head in the sand and pretend the issue you're having difficulty with simply isn't there. But the problem with going into Ostrich Mode is that the issue persists and it WILL rear its ugly head the next time a trigger is encountered. My entire life, I have been stamping down on the way I feel, and the way I see myself, because I learned pretty damn quick that 'girls' aren't supposed to like playing with toy cars & trainsets. Or helping their dads fix their car. Or running around topless in the African sun, revelling in the freedom of being a child. No, those little pleasures are reserved solely for boys, according to my folks. The problem is: I couldn't see what was so bloody different between my older brother and myself. Actually, that's not true: unlike my brother, I was very keen to work on my dad's car with him (but he pushed me away to go play with dolls or something); my favourite colour was blue (but my folks would buy me blue dresses and think that was OK); and my brother is useless at DIY and other practical tasks (I'm really good at them, and I taught him a few things too).
But back to that carpet/closet/hole in the ground. So yesterday, I had a bit of an existential crisis. I made the 'mistake' of opening the closet door and seeing the all-too-familiar elephant sitting in its corner. You see, I had the misfortune of clicking on an article in the Daily Mail about an FTM transgender teenager, who had a miserable childhood being treated like a girl, but whose supportive parents enabled him to go on hormones and start transitioning. He's much happier with his new public face and is looking forward to a life in a skin he is comfortable with.
And I thought: "You Lucky Fucking Bastard".
Reading his story, and watching his (very emotional, set to Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol) YouTube video showing stills of him as a sad little girl, and then showing him becoming a happier teenage boy, made me blub like a 3-year-old. It brought back all those horrible, shoved-down, hidden, repressed thoughts I've had to stomp on for MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE about how I'm NOT in the right skin, I DON'T feel comfortable with female clothing, I NEVER look at my self in the mirror or in the bathtub, I only have sex in the dark because I don't want to look at tits etc. and I HATE being addressed by female pronouns (they always jar terribly; it's like someone calling me 'tall' or 'black', two other things that I am quite obviously NOT and that I personally don't identify with).
So I spent quite a bit of time yesterday thinking about my childhood memories, remembering what it was like to be me growing up. I thought about when I first noticed that there was a huge discrepancy between what people told me I have to be and what I actually am inside; if this feeling has ever ended (it hasn't); and what it felt like every time I noticed that I was unhappy with my apparent gender. I came to the conclusion that I've had Gender Identity issues for as long as I can remember, and they've not gotten better. So now here I am, aged forty, married and the mother of two daughters, thinking that it's high time I did something about this.
So I did a couple of shitty Internet-based 'What gender is your brain?' type tests, which I know are not very scientific but at least they give you an indication. The most charitable one put me down as 'androgynous' with a few female characteristics but an overall male thinking pattern; the more accurate one, as it asked some questions about sexual attraction too, put me down as 'homosexual male'. Which I actually agree with, incidentally.
I happen to have Asperger Syndrome, and I visit some fora for advice/help with that. So I went around the usual psychology forum that I use for Aspie issues, and whaddaya know, they also have a Gender Identity Disorder forum. (And some threads in the Aspie forum about Aspies with GID and the link between the two conditions; I wonder whether it's more common in female Aspies due to our male thinking patterns?). I lurked in a couple of threads - and found some very inspirational stuff from a 63-year-old in the same position as me who has learned to accept her skin & whose husband understands & loves her for who she is. Can I achieve the same? Because hell, I love my husband but he's as straight as an arrow. He won't want to be with someone who's transgendered, I'm sure of it. And why should he? He's a straight man who married a (very tomboyish) woman. Since I dropped a few hints last night about wanting to dress in more masculine clothing & hating the look of my body for my whole life, he's been rather distant - as he always is when this comes up. Sigh.
So. Shit. The elephant is back in the room, as it tends to be at least once a year when I let it out into the daylight, and it's shat all over the bedroom floor. So what am I to do? Stuff it back in the closet again, stick my fingers in my ears and pretend it isn't there, until the next time the door is wrenched open? Or start formally investigating why I've felt this way all my life and see where it takes me?
I've decided on the latter. Life's too short. (And so am I).
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