I recall being four or five years old and being drawn by the sight of my mother's closet. Her dresses and skirts hung above a four tier shoe rack which held pair after pair of high heels.
I remember sneaking into the basement with a stolen item of clothing. I'd try on whatever Item I had in hand and look at myself in the old, dusty mirror that sat unused under the stairs. Shaking unconttrollably, I would then pray to God to make me a girl. A prayer that went unanswered.
As I got a little bit older, I knew of words like "Transsexual" and "Crossdresser", but information on these terms was hard to come by for a child, especially since asking questions was too scary. So I did what I could, even going so far as to find three individual dictionaries and reading the definitions of any words affiliated with gender.
Despite my best efforts I was left with little more than a basic understanding of what I was going through, until fate or maybe dumb luck decided to drop the information in front of me.
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| My mother and I were visiting my grandmother. I could hear the two generations of women talking on and on at the kitchen table. Their topic of conversation was lost on me as I sat downstairs, two inches from the T.V.screen, manually and mindlessly going channel to channel. Finally something caught my interest. I saw this woman's face on the screen and I heard the word, "Transsexual" I lowered the volume so that I could barely hear the Narrator over the upstairs conversation. I placed my finger on the channel button, just in case. If someone had come down to check on me, they'd have found me entranced by the glowing, almost silent television set, Learning that there was hope beyond the prayers I had made. I wasn't alone. |
I grew older and the internet was dialing up in every home, and alothough my family was one of the last to connect to the world wide web, when we finally did, I was beyond happy.
I weasled my way out of a family function by faking sick and waited for the house to empty out.
When the house did fall silent, butterflies filled my stomach.
I ran around the house, locking the doors and closing the blinds. The computer sat in the living room, which had made any research on any sexual subject impossible until now.
I knew I'd come across people who could help, people who were just like me. I started by reading some poorly written posts, but at the time I didn't care. I was too starved for information, anything was absolute girlish gold. I read article after article until I collected enough knowledge to explain what I felt, what I didn't feel and I wanted to explain all these things, but I couldn't tell anyone. I could never let my secret out to anyone in my family, so I did what I thought was best.
I saw the list of chat rooms when I first signed on and sure enough there was a "Tranny" room mixed in with all the rest. Once I was in I froze afraid to type anything. I said hello as people welcomed me, but I didn't know what else to do or say, then out of nowhere a window popped up and I began my first private chat. Afraid that I would be drawn into the filthy and overwhleming sexual conversations in the main room I began with "Hi, I'm very new and I'm looking for someone who can answer a few questions about all this stuff." Once again it was either fate or dumb luck and I was talking to a 20 something Genetic Girl who dated a crossdresser. She said she had figured I was new and young and that this wasn't the best place for info, but she answered my questions and gave me a few articles to look up. I was beyond grateful and after our long chat we said goodbye and with very little time left alone I rushed to print each one.
It took forever and I wasted almost 20 sheets of paper, but by the time my family returned every door was unlocked, every window was uncovered and those sheets of paper were under my bed waiting for me.
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| I continued going online for years to come and it began getting easier to get privacy. I had access to the internet and was in my teenage years. I started highschool and like I've said before I hated it, but when I came home I had 3 or 4 hours of free time which I spent weaving through the web. Sometimes, I would use these solitary moments to delve into my ever growing sexual fantasies, but we will talk about that a little later and I will cover that topic in full in an upcoming post. For now, I want to talk about the above photo because the blonde with the pretty smile, was a huge inspiration to me. Her name is Gabrielle Scahffer and if you have ever heard of another Trans woman named Lynn Conway, you may have seen a webpage called "Transsexual Women's Success" Lynn Conway has a few webpages and she is someone who bravely transitioned before the internet and the information and acceptance that came with it. If you think it's hard to be Transgendered in this day and age, which in a lot of ways it is still a brutal test of a person's inner strength, imagine doing it when you couldn't reach out to another person who knows what you are going through. Like the title of this post, we can be lonely because we have no one near to confide in or who understands, but you know there are others and you can go online and talk to them, learn about them and possibly find a way to meet other Transgendered girls in person which could even be at a Planned party held in a hotel ballroom, but women like Lynn were alone. I am amazed she had the will to do it. Now, back to the photo. When I saw this photo it was the first time I stopped and thought, "I could really do it. I could be a girl. A woman." I don't know why. Maybe because she was pretty and passable, but I think it's because she didn't look too old, maybe mid twenties and she didn't look fake like many of the other girls who had plastic surgeries upon plastic surgeries. She just look like a girl, a woman. I wanted to be like that. A woman. I didn't want to look like someone trying to be a woman. I felt like nothing could stop me at this point, but I was entering my teenage years and hadn't seen the full potential of cruelty that the world can sometimes dish out. |
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