Growing up my parents probably thought of me as a tom-boy. I didn’t really go out, not very keen on rough and tumble. Not a tom-boy, just not really a girl. Ever. I used to dream that I would wake up and find out it had all been some mistake, that I really was a boy. Or, when I found out those nasty tricks that biology had in store for me, that at least I wasn’t fully female.
In the days before such things were discussed in public, at the back of my head, I think there was a very stressed trans (trans-something I had no clue) trying to express things that didn’t exist. This was at a time of 3 tv channels and the white dot (‘booooop’ would go the sound) at the end of the evening transmission so of course there was only the simple and obvious binary tyranny of male and female.
The time came and I woke up one morning and I bled. It was before I was 11, I’m sure of that. And because I was a glumly logical type I remember sitting and calculating how many days of my life I would spend bleeding. Course then I didn’t know about the pain and the moods. But I knew about feeling different, feeling wrong, feeling dirty and disgusted with this body that I couldn’t trust.
Let’s say the transition to woman was not one I embraced.
Thankfully, I guess, this was also a time before the invention of Photoshop and the more recent trends of what seems to be expected. In the halcyon days when Brut for Men was about as sophisticated as personal grooming got, before adverts about female topiary and being told how enjoyable periods should be I just kinda put my head down and waited for the forty years or so for it all to be over.
I didn’t want anything to do with boys. What use were they for?
Brought up to make do with the hand I was dealt it never once occurred to me that things could be different or even that should want to be happy.
I lost my virginity at 17. Lost is the wrong word. Decided to find out what the fuss was about is a better description. I met a friend of a friend. He was 21 so I figured he would know what he was doing and that was that. No mess, little fuss, no sense of loss. The earth didn’t move, but then I never expected it to.
25 years on and I’m on my 2nd husband (3rd if you count the one without the paperwork). I’ve had a number of experiences along the way – thankfully another affect of age is that things were less dangerous back then. I have to say, though, that I still don’t have the faintest idea of about ‘feminine’.
I’m still uncertain about clothes. Attempting to buy underwear that I am comfortable with (somewhere between strict function and frills and bows) can bring on panic attacks. I’m still convinced when I see myself in a skirt/dress that I look like a bad transvestite. I’m hopeless with shoes and make up is a foreign country to me.
What am I trying to say?
I present as female and I prefer men. Let’s face it, deep down I am lazy so I guess I’ve just got used to being me. I know there are probably labels for what I am, and if I was starting the journey now there may be other routes open to me that would make something of those labels.
If you see me on the street you might make an assumption about me. Have fun with that. x