Since I have come out to my Mom as being transgender, she has
asked me several times to prove the unprovable, to prove that I feel how I feel
with concrete evidence. As frustrating
as that has been, because how do you prove your feelings to someone else other
than telling them how you feel, it has made me do a bit of reflecting. On top of that, I have been working through a
workbook that I found on Amazon called “The Transgender Workbook – Your Guide
to Womanhood” that is meant to be worked through while reading the companion
book, “The Transgender Guidebook.” I had
already read the companion book previously so now I am strictly working through
the workbook on its own. Between my Mom,
the guidebook, the workbook, and therapy, I have been doing a lot of reflecting
about what has led me to the point that I am at in my life now.
As a small child, I knew that I was not a normal boy but I didn’t
know exactly what was different about me until around the age of 7. Around that time is when I started to realize
that the reason I was not a normal boy because I wasn’t a boy at all, I was a
girl, despite what my body and everyone around me said. I had told a few people that I was a girl
before it really sunk in that I needed to hide that fact because when they found
out, they would make fun of me and sometimes even try to beat me up. I learned quickly that I needed to fight back
when people would try to pick on me because when you didn’t fight back, they
would just continue until you gave them a reason not to. I hated this.
I hated fighting. I hated that it
was expected of me and I hate the way that I responded to that
expectation. I ended up over
compensating in a sense because I became the type of kid that would lash out at
people if they even dared to look at me cross-eyed. Looking back, I think this was because of not
only backlash to having to live up to the male expectations, but also the fact
that I was lashing out because I was angry that I was being denied what I
thought I should have had. I didn’t get
the pretty dresses or the cute dolls. I
didn’t get to play with the girls in the way that I wanted to play. I had to be the boy and play like the boys
played. That said, it wasn’t all bad,
somethings that were considered typical boy style play, I did find
enjoyable. I probably would have been
classified as a tomboy had I been fortunate enough to be born with the correct
anatomy.
When you are a girl growing up as a boy because of the unfortunate
birth defect (sometimes it is easier to think of it that way) that was thrust
upon you, certain expected behaviors don’t come naturally to you. As a child, I had to look toward the other
boys in my life in order to know how to act properly. The main source that I used was my brother, I
looked to him regularly as an example of how I was supposed to behave. I would follow him and his friends around,
probably making a nuisance of myself, trying to figure out how to be a proper
boy. In addition to him I also would try
to emulate the boys that picked on me, trying to be like them so that I
wouldn’t stand out so much. A lot of
times, this would just lead to more teasing and bullying but, that at least it
seems to have worked to some degree as there are some people from my childhood
that, when they find out about me, seem surprised that I am trans and have been
dealing with the way I feel since I was a child. In fact, it seems like I get three reactions
from the people that I knew as a child.
The most common reaction is surprise; this reaction mostly comes from the
people that were more acquaintances than friends or family. The second most common reaction is shock
followed by them looking back and seeing the signs they missed at the time that
alluded to what I just told them about myself.
The third and least common is, normally, just a flat stare followed by
an “It’s about time” speech.
When I was a child, one of the ways that I would cope with my
feelings of being a girl to use my imagination to make up stories to explain
why I was in the body of a boy. These
stories were the fantasies of a child so they are a bit ridiculous and
unrealistic so please keep that in mind…
One of the more common fantasies I used to have is that I was a
beautiful princess from a magical realm and, due to various reasons, there was
an uprising, revolt, or some other dangerous situation, and I was whisked away
to my current life in an effort to protect me.
In this fantasy, I was supposed to live here on Earth, unaware of my
real life in the kingdom, until it was safe for me to return. My parents were my guardians and they were
the only ones that knew who I really was but they had to play their roles too
so that I wouldn’t find out before the time was right for my return. While I was living on Earth as a boy, there
were people from the other world hunting me, looking for the slightest hint
that I wasn’t the boy I appeared to be which would give me away and my life
would be in danger. Upon returning to my real home, I would assume my old form
and once again be the princess of the land.
Like I said, ridiculous and unrealistic, even a bit silly, but it helped
me get through childhood.
Another thing that I did a lot of was pray. I would pray to God, initially, to give me
the body of a girl like I was knew supposed to have but, as I got older, I also
started asking for my mind, my sense of self if you will, be made into that of
a boy so that I could at least be happy in the body I had been given. Over the years, as I became a teen and puberty
started, the lack of response from God, one way or another, bred resentment in
my heart and I became very angry at God because I felt as though there was some
cosmic joke going on at my expense that I was not aware of. It took me many years to resolve my feelings
towards God and forgive him of the perceived wrong that I felt had been thrust
upon me.
I had mentioned earlier that, after I realized that the thing
wrong with me was that I was a girl in the wrong body, I had told a few
people. I told them around about a year
after my realization, I can’t remember the exact time frame. Most were other children my age, both girls
and boys and the reactions from both were fairly similar, though a bit more
physical when it came to the boys. I did
tell a couple of adults around the same time as well, in fact, there was one in
particular that stands out in my mind. I
don’t like to think about this person because of what happened to me not long
after and I don’t want to name them either because this person is no longer
alive and I don’t want to cause their family pain. I have never told anyone else the identity of
this person and that information will go with me to my grave because enough
pain has been caused by their actions, there is no need to cause more. The only other people I have ever talked to
about this is my spouse, my therapist, and a few of the people in my support
group.
In fact, until recently, I didn’t even remember the event in full. Up until the rest of that memory surfaced, I
could only remember the time leading up to and then the time after the event
with very little flashes in between. I
was driving when I started to remember what exactly had happened. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I had to pull
over in order to get myself calmed down.
Even then, the full memory didn’t surface until a few days after that
and I am going to spare anyone that reads this the details, I think what I say
will probably be more than enough for adults to figure out what happened.
That person was one of the men at the church I grew up as a member
of and he offered to pray with me about it.
I thanked him for the offer and took him up on it. After the prayer, the rest of the Sunday
continued as normal. A few weeks later,
things happened in such a way to where him and I ended up alone together and he
proceeded to touch me inappropriately while forcing me to do the same to
him. He tried to do more than that but I
resisted and started to cry and scream which put an end to his advances and
allowed me to avoid any further molestation. He told me to never tell anyone because they
would never believe me due to how respected he was and all that would happen
afterward is that my family would suffer because of my lies. That memory haunts me and I often think about
how that event would have been the perfect thing to explain why I am the way
that I am but, the fact of the matter is, that happened after I already knew I
was a girl. The only reason I shared
that was that I know some people think that there has to be something in my
life, some catalyst, that made me transgender and of the sort of stuff they
expect, that’s the only thing that I think would come close to their
expectations. That’s not to say that
what happened didn’t affect me at all, I do have some sever emotional scars
from that event and because of it, I have had trouble trusting certain types of
males.
But for the people who insist that there was a catalyst, an event
that made me the way that I am, I won’t disagree. There is a catalyst and it falls in a place a
lot of people wouldn’t think of. In the
timeframe of my life, it falls into in a very narrow window of time, that window
is somewhere between the time of conception and birth. Some of the more recent theories about what
causes transsexualism say that the cause is something that happens when the
fetus is developing in the womb. The
theories state that due to the activation, or lack of activation, of the
androgen receptors in the body and brain during certain key developmental
stages of the fetus, it is possible (and likely) that one or more areas of the
body can be masculinized while others are not, potentially leading to
combinations where the brain and body do not match up, creating a disconnect between
gender identity and birth sex. This is
one of the key things that leads to intersexed conditions (I am including the
multitude of sex chromosomal differences) that affect an estimated 1 out of
4500 children born. Just something to
think about.
- Arylin Michelle
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