#transnarrative

The short answer: No, there wasn't just a single moment in time where I just knew.

The long answer: There’s sort of a stereotype in the transgender community that, growing up, we immediately knew that we didn’t fit our desired gender. Since I am someone undergoing male-to-female (MtF) transition, I’m sort of familiar with stereotypical narratives associated with MtF individuals. Supposedly at a young age, we were supposed to feel like that we didn’t like many boy related things. This includes the toys we played with (e.g., preference for dolls instead of action figures) or the clothes we wore (e.g., preference for girls clothing instead of boys clothing).

One thing I’ve seen in talking to other individuals embarking on this journey is that, while some stories fit the traditional narrative, most of the time individuals each of their own unique set of experiences that don’t follow that narrative.

For myself, I don’t believe many parts of my story fit the traditional narrative. From a young age, I definitely was not interested in very many things young girls were into at the time (which was the late 80s, early 90s). I had plenty of action figures (I was really into the ninja turtles). I had a Nintendo, a Game Boy, and a plethora of other video gaming systems. I liked to play sports with the other boys. Girls were stupid, why would you want them as friends? If anything, I had a pretty stereotypical upbringing any boy had.

Just as a side note: To provide an example of how gender stereotypes are just that, stereotypes, there are many male oriented things I still partake in. I’m still a huge nerd and play video games all the time. In terms of other things, I definitely eat more like a dude. The amount of food I consume is extremely un-lady-like (as many of my friends and colleagues would probably attest to). I like to tinker with computers. All these latter things I did pre-transition and continue to do now that I am in the midst of it.

Things got confusing for me as I approached my teenage adolescence. One thing I distinctly remember is that I would look through fashion catalogs sent in the mail, and wish I could be the women in those catalogues. At night, I would pray that I would wake up as a female (but to no avail, of course). During this time, the surge of male hormones made things extremely confusing. I was very much attracted to girls and had no interest in guys. At the same time, I started feeling like I wanted to be female, act female, to actually feel like I was female. What I can say about this, is these feelings persisted all throughout high school, through my undergraduate education, through graduate school and up until now. It was a source of great anxiety, and occasionally some despair. I felt trapped. Trapped because I knew I could never possibly be “one of the girls” and trapped because even if I could, my parents would disown me.

So I suppressed these feelings for a good long while. I treated my feelings towards my own gender as a perversion. No normal person would feel this way, right? All throughout high school and college, I went through cycles of accumulating female clothing, wearing them in private to find relief from my own anxiety caused by the gender dysphoria I was experiencing, and purges of said clothing because I felt ashamed of myself in doing this.

I’m not sure what my parents thought about my behavior in the times they managed to catch me. I had been caught doing strange things several times growing up…messing with nail polish and makeup, wearing my mom’s clothing (which she would notice things were out of place), even my mom catching me “en femme”, wig and all. I was ashamed of myself. My parents, understandably, did not how to interpret my behavior.

I would go years cycling between my highs and lows. It wasn’t until the last few years of undergrad that I started cross dressing again. I remember a time during undergrad where I picked up the phone to call a mental health counselor on campus, only to call back a day later to cancel my appointment. I was still very afraid of any consequences of me going any further than cross dressing. What would my parents think? What would my siblings think? How would my friends react? Again, I felt really ashamed of this behavior. I spent a lot of my energy suppressing these feelings and rationalizing them away. It is a perversion. Maybe I just needed to be dating women more, and if I got into a good relationship, these feelings would go away.

After undergrad, I moved across the country to attend graduate school. I spent a fair number of years in graduate school successfully suppressing my gender dysphoria. I had so many other stressors do deal with, I don’t think it had the opportunity to come up often. However, it was always there, in the back of my mind. At some point, I did consider trying to transition…but my in my mind, I could never do it because my parents would never approve. Also, I thought I would never ever pass as a female. So I just kept on suppressing my dysphoria in hopes it would go away.

I earned my graduate degree and moved to the great progressive state of Massachusetts. When I first moved here, the dysphoria came back pretty hard. I had seriously considered transitioning right when I came. Though I knew my parents would not approve, I was financially free of them. And I was in Massachusetts, one of the most accepting places for LGBT individuals in the United States. However, with the new job, I wanted to make sure everyone at work knew I was a normal hardworking person. So I kept on doing the same thing I did before, suppress feelings regarding my gender.

All throughout these years, I read testimonials and stories of successful transitions. I yearned to be one of those individuals. It wasn’t until about a year into living in Massachusetts, I decided to take the dive. Ironically, I made that decision while I was outside of Massachusetts visiting friends. It was one night where I was perusing posts on Reddit (an online community for those who don’t know) about individuals transitioning from their birth gender. This triggered my anxiety. I was already in my late twenties. I thought to myself “I’m going to miss the boat, and I’m going to regret this for the rest of my entire life.” I didn’t sleep that night, because I was so anxious about my predicament.

I traveled back home to Boston, and a few weeks later, I decided it was time to contact a counselor who specialized in gender identity issues to help me sort out what I had been struggling with my entire life. It was really hard for me to do this. I played a bit of phone tag with my current therapist, because I was really afraid of all the consequences that I may (or will) face. But I knew that I couldn’t keep mentally doing this to myself, going through cycles of anxiety, relief, shame and depression. It was at that point I took my first step into transitioning. I started counseling, and over time, became semi-convinced that transitioning to become female is something I really wanted all along. That pretty much takes me to where I am today (I realized I skipped a few steps here, but I’m saving it for other posts).

My story is typical in many ways, but in some sense, it doesn’t completely fit the “narrative” we all look for in individuals transitioning from their birth gender. I didn’t have any of these feelings very early on. I didn’t “know” if I was really transgender or not, really at any point during my life. There was no singular moment where I was convinced I was transgender. In fact, it wasn’t until recently did I tell myself, “Yeah, I’m transgender.” There was a whole lot of questioning going on during my life and a great deal of uncertainty of what my true gender really was. I was afraid that my wanting to be female was a sexual perversion or fetish that would go away as soon as I settled down with someone, that my “true” gender had nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, even with any relationship I had, my gender dysphoria never went away.

And I decided to do something about it. Which takes me to today. My story, so to speak, continues onward as I reach a critical part in my life. I’ve decided that this path is probably the right one to take, despite my fear of an uncertain future. At the moment, I feel like myself and more at peace than in many prior years. Though this might change in the future, I can say that presently, I am so far happy with the path I’ve chosen for myself. One can just hope that I can persevere through the hurdles I have ahead of me.

Lastly, I'm not particularly ashamed or embarrassed to share all this information (clearly). This is all a part of my story, my narrative and my life. I choose not to try to mentally struggle with my past, because there's nothing I can do to change it. I also think its really important to put these stories out there, because I believe that while some trans* individuals have unique narratives, all of us, to some extent, share many other aspects of our story. 

Just because your story doesn't fit some narrative doesn't mean you are or are not transgender. I want others who are transitioning to know that in some ways, we all share in the process.