#exploring the self

So I’ve been contemplating more about myself, my expression, my ideals and trends I’d noted since childhood. I liked games of "lets pretend" and played with dolls and the like. But when I saw my brother's friends Marvel action figures? I wanted one. They looked so cool, so unusual and occasionally monstrous (I think it was Venom or a character from Spawn I'd seen). But "those were for boys" and I think Mom was worried I'd want to read the very adult-themed comics.

In my games of let's-pretend there were two in this instance I find relevant: Playing at "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman" (a television series my friend and I would play pretend about, it was a great show) and "Peter Pan" (the Disney version). My friend always wanted to be Dr. Quinn and Wendy. I never contested this: I always wanted to be Sully or Pan. When we'd play at school, I would argue ineffectively with the boys that I wanted to be Pan and was going to be Pan. But I was a girl. I think I was also a little jealous or afraid of losing my friend's attentions in the game at school. I mostly socialized with girls or my younger brother's playmates...but that’s not entirely true either. I had boy friends too. And heh, even had a couple boyfriends (it was innocent enough and we shared a particular affection, receiving much teasing from our peers).

At a young age, its hard for me to say when I might've been between six and nine, I started wanting to be a boy. I knew it was impossible because I was born female and God wasn't going to change that. It wasn't fair, the way boys and girls were subtly treated differently. I didn't consciously understand how this was but that it indeed was. I hated it.

I wanted to wear pants and shirts to church and run-and-chase with the boys instead of the pretty dresses I'd get yelled at for trying to follow them up trees. I felt confined even as I enjoyed wearing pretty things but hated how little old ladies would pluck at my clothes in their delight with my appearance. I was always well-dressed, especially at church.

When an after-school program for Martial Arts became available, I wanted to attend. I was discouraged by my peers because "that's for boys" and "it hurts when they hit you, you don't really want that, do you?" with heavy implication that I would be seen as strange and unaccepted (in an environment where I was already an outsider for being both the new girl at a cliquey grade-school and unpredictably strange because of a battery of medications for ADD and their various and terrible side-effects which included an uncontrollable head-twitch every five minutes, unexpected zoning and a crash - like my head was literally having to reboot itself - followed by a nearly dazed mental state when it was no longer in my system and I metabolized that shit so fast my prescribed doses were nearing concerning levels for those prescribing them to me. All of this disappeared once I was taken off medications and now I take vitamin supplements which work so much better). When I expressed this to my family, they repeated the its-a-contact-sport doubts (without the other negative emotional flavors) and their questioning in my ability to handle it when I was already expressing interest and should therefore obviously know led me to wonder if I could and so didn't try. But when my brother started taking Karate classes and I wanted to join?

They said no.

And I had to go sit with Mom through his lessons on the sidelines.

It wasn't until I was an adult and asked about it that my mother told me they couldn't afford to have us both take classes and it wouldn't have been fair for my brother to suddenly have to stop.

But it felt at the time like I wasn't encouraged to do these things, like there was some reason I couldn't and I was left to my own devices to figure out why because why would I ask them when I didn't even know what to ask and there was already so much else going on like my mother back in college and my parents divorcing and oh, my God I'm moving again and last time that happened I was the outsider in a cliquey school and and and...

In my explorations of meditation and spirituality I happened upon a meditation specifically designed to meet your inner opposite gendered self. Because yeah, we all have that. Right?

I was both aroused by and curious about this part of myself and revisited this meditation infrequently, but certainly more than once over the years.

In High School, when I was suddenly refusing to date men as a reflexive response to prolonged sexual abuse by my afterward-ex boyfriend, I wasn't exactly free to date women, nor were there very many I'd found myself attracted to. I only knew of one bisexual classmate and while she was fun to hang out with, we weren’t attracted to one another. There was one in particular and she'd been attracted to me on and off while with aforementioned boy but by the time that subtle mess ended I was changed and she had another boyfriend and basically that was that.

I adored her silently, remained her friend for at least a year before she decided, for unrelated reasons, that we couldn't be friends. Broke my heart on so many levels.

Around that time I'd sometimes wondered what I'd look like as a guy, even going so far as to wear loose clothes and in secrecy, gave myself fake facial hair with makeup and looked in the bathroom mirror before washing it off and coming back out. In the grand scheme of things it didn't seem terribly important, not when faced with the zoo of High School and sheltered by parents.

I was always attracted to men with long hair and women with short hair, or at least admired them for breaking gender constraints to be themselves.

I find that the comfort a person has to have with themself to do so is incredibly attractive.

I was very sheltered. I hadn't even seen any of the "Scream" film franchise until my Junior year in college and that was because a friend had found out and was appalled by the tragedy. She fixed it with a movie marathon and copious amounts of popcorn.

Anyway this is both something I keep coming back to and leave in favor of "more important" life-things. So here I am again.

Yesterday I went into a store, without intent to buy anything, silently leafed through the men's section and took my gleanings into the changing room and tried everything on. My hair had been tied back (its really long right now and for 24 hours I've been contemplating cutting it but I'm holding off on that because I've been trying to grow it out for over two years and I don't want to make a snap-decision I'll regret for the next five just to get it back to shoulder length. It's kindof hard not to take scissors to my hair right now and just chop it off if for no other reason than A: I love the way the length looks on me and B: its actually going to save me lots of money on conditioner if I make it shorter) and slicked to my scalp, so it was mostly out of the way. I didn't look bad. No real judgement on how I did look. I felt like I had to hide what I was doing or at least not draw attention to myself (I am in a small town in the middle of conservativille). My heart was pounding and I had this odd pins-and-needles feeling all over. I wasn't uncomfortable at all and kindof liked the way a few shirts fell on me (I'd been wearing a sports bra, so my chest was smaller than usual). I did note a lot of neutral tones in the men's section and I kindof like colors. I love black and grey, too, but I've in the past couple years been enjoying a greater amount of color in my wardrobe.

It helped me figure out sizes in men’s clothing anyway.

I even took an extensive quiz online and the results were eerily accurate to what I've been guessing about myself and I don't even have a name for the emotion I felt when I read them. I know that it's just a quiz and that ultimately I'm the one who will have to figure this out, nothing and no one else can do it for me and I don't want that anyway. But here are the results.

"Your Raw Score is: 355, which indicates that overall you are Androgynous

Your appearance is Masculine (its not but I disregarded the appearance-related questions which were automatically relegated to "neutral" because I felt them irrelevant)

Your brain processes are mostly that of a Androgynous person.

You appear to socialize in a feminine manner.

You believe you have mild conflicts about your gender identity.

You indicated your were born Female.

ANALYSIS: Female to Male Crossdresser NOTES:    You are in a statistical minority as a bisexual crossdresser. Most crossdressers are heterosexual. Your motivation for crossdressing may be driven by the binary nature of your sexuality, as a way to more fully explore the Male gender role."

My heart pounded, my skin felt tingly all over and I felt this nervousness which could have been a deeper fear of sorts but I had to get up and do things so I couldn't process the emotion. I seriously didn’t and still don’t know what I felt. Maybe it was similar to the feeling I had when drawing a couple back in High School, in the dark glow of the midnight television and slowly realized I was drawing not a male and female kissing but two women. A shock of some kind, a kind of physically-felt emotional impact is what I felt here, not the slow tingling rush of fear and revelation and secret pride I felt then.

I still think of myself as feminine. I've never been uncomfortable in my skin excepting the usual complaints people have. I identify as female, but I feel like I haven't explored my masculinity enough. What is 'enough'? Am I processing an assertiveness that I've let go of in some way? Is this an expression of under-explored sexuality? What the fuck, self?

And I know, so many people seem to have this shit figured out already. Why haven’t I? I suspect half the reason was that I spent too much time trying to “make it work” with men who were insecure and would have been threatened by these explorations and frankly didn’t understand how much a part of me this was so I left it alone.

This is ridiculous in some ways and that's what I'm telling myself right now so I don't stress over it because stress isn't necessary in this, I don’t think. And I have things that need done. So here is where I abruptly leave and post this.