Intro Post

[garlicfiend.livejournal.com]

X-posted to mtf for the sake of efficiency.

Hi, I'm Felix. I've been on LJ for quite a while, but have only recently cemented my identity as mtf transgendered individual.



So right, about me.

I'm 32 years old, and I have spent my entire adult life attempting to come to terms with this. Because I always knew that, gender-wise, I had issues. One of my first memories is when I was six years old, I was dressing up in my sister's clothes and pretending I was a girl. I knew, even at that point, that this was something I could "pretend" in the privacy of my own house, but that I couldn't do in public. By fourth grade, all my peers had figured out that I was "different" somehow, and life has never been easy since. Boy stuff that came easy for them required an arduous learning process for me. Yeah, I know, this is stuff you have all heard before and probably been through.

It's strange. Somehow in high school, I became best friends with another guy who was also transgendered. In fact, in my teenage group of friends, I can count five or six people who either are or I suspect are transgendered. This seems statistically impossible, but as my wife said -- people find each other. But of course, none of us was going to talk about any of it. The conditioning was way to deep for that. My best friend eventually self-destructed. He spends his life trying as hard as he can to be the asshole uper-male he knows he's not, and I avoid any contact with him.

When I first started going out with my wife in high school, one of the first things I did when we were going out was expose her to my cross-dressing habits. Because I knew that it was pointless to get involved with anyone unless they were okay with that. Because the cross-dressing had never stopped. Having a sister two years older than me made it easy for me. My parents caught me more than once, and when I was in middle school they sent me to a psychologist. The only thing that did for me was teach me how to lie better and be more paranoid about getting caught. So I had to see if she would be okay with this. And oddly enough she was. We talked about things way back then, and she brought up the idea of me being a transexual. And I recoiled from that, a straight up fear response. This was back in 1991, before the internet brought people together, when transexuals were beyond freaks. The Gay Rights movement was just gaining momentum, and there was no  BT in GLBT.

So seriously, I've spent the last fifteen years or so trying to some way of coming to terms with I called my "wierdness." It has been a long difficult and strange emotional/psychological/spiritual path. I wasn't trying to deny the female part of me. I wanted to make peace with it, find a workable lasting compromise, whatever. No matter what, I kept hope that there was something that would fix this. I married that understanding girlfriend, and we now have two kids, ages 7(boy) and 6(girl). I had also joined the Army National Guard.

In November 2003, my unit was activated to go to Iraq. We spent a year in the middle of Baghdad, and during that time I was full time male-soldier, communal living with other male soldiers. I couldn't even allow myself to think of cross-dressing or being feminine. So I made it home. I had got rid of all my female clothes and stuff before I left. I knew my wife was going to move while I was gone, and we didn't need family members helping her move and asking about a bunch of girl stuff that obviously wasn't hers. And I thought, stupidly that, hey, I had gone 18 months being 100% guy, right? Maybe that was it, maybe I was cured. Bwahahaha! yeah right.

No, I ended up getting more girl clothes, because that urge, that need came back with a vengeance. And eventually, I came to the realization that this female inside me was just pissed. She had put up with enough and was pissed at being stuck in a male body. I had exhausted every other option, so I finally decided to get on the net and type "transexual" into google. Just research, mind, because god knows I wasn't right? right. So up pops transsexual.org. And I start reading. And I read a lot. And I took the COGIATI, and got the "likely transsexual" result. And I was like "huh." Because I am not an idiot. It's a good site, but it has it's problems, as does the test. But it was enough to get me thinking.

And I came to realize that at some point I had split my personality, stuck the female self, the original self, in her own little closet, letting her out for a bit of dress-up once in a while. And the operating personality was this complex model of male behavior that I had slowly built over the years. Reading the site made me realize that this was a process, it was doable. Before, I had wholly rejected doing something like transition because I never had any hope of passing. But I wasn't passing as a man anyways. Men always knwe. They didn't know what they knew, but they always knew I wasn't right, that I didn't fit.

And what made the real difference was the overwhelming feeling of happiness and joy that thoughts of transiitioning caused me to feel. And I knew with certainty that this was the only road left. After all my searching, this is the only thing that would work. And once I knew this, I also knew that I would simply kill myself if I didn't. And I'm not afraid to do this. I literally haven't been afraid of anything since going to Iraq. And how could I bee so afraid of anything that could make me so happy?

Three days after beginning my research, three days after looking all over the net, I came out to my wife. That was hard. In a sense, she already knew, right? She was a little angry that I hadn't figured all this out way back when we had first talked about it. Well, she was initially pretty supportive. But then things hit a snag. Or more accurately, an emotional landmine. Because she too has always had her own genderqueer issues, something we had never talked about. I mean, I knew she hated wearing makeup, and was never girly, and never wore skirts or dresses, etc. But I never knew it was a real issue with her. And now she is pissed because she tought she had come to terms with those issues, and now I pull this, and if she has dealt with hers, why can't I deal with mine, and all this is making her realize that perhaps hers weren't as dealt with as she thought they were. *sigh*

I think we have worked through it now. Our kids seem to be coping fine.

So as far as transition -- well, I am of the opinion that Transition started as soon as I realized what I was, when the woman became the personality in charge once more. Since then, it has all been practicing and studying. I have no interest in becoming a "social woman" -- ie. fulfilling the female role in our society and how we are told it should be filled. I want a body that matches my brain. But I understand that I will still need to pass, just as I have needed to as a man. So I work and study and practice. The real barrier, of course, is money. My wife is in school, and I am unemployed (about to get a part time job). Just to get the rudiments of a wardrobe that I need to stay sane has been stretching the budget. Hormones and electrolysis are out of the question, even a psych visit.

Once my wife finishes school, she'll be able to get a good job, but I have been stern with myself. When I let the girl part took back over, the responsible adult boy part let her know that if she was going to do this, was going to demand I do this, then she had to find a way to make it happen. This is hard enough on my wife without making her pay for it too. So I'm finding a way. Somehow.

So I am not out yet to anyone but my wife and now these two communities, transgender and mtf. I'm not exactly keeping it a secret, either. Well, okay, maybe from my parents and relatives. But as far as my lj friends at leat, I'm in the closet with the door open. If they cared to look, they would find out, but I don't think any of them would be too shocked.

So that's where I am at. As a reward to anybody who read this far, here are a coupla pics of me...







So now that  have introduced myself properly, I expect to quit lurking and comment when the mood strikes me, and generally become one of the furniture here -- preferably a chaise lounge, but I'll take what I can get as long as it's not an ottoman.