When is a girl a boy ... or a girl .... or herself

I was looking at older pictures of me with a friend of mine the other day - and she really liked »the guy« she saw there - she found him attractive and very masculine.
I could absolutely not agree in terms of me being that person.
I looked kind of fit - yes. I did loads of sports - sometimes more than was good for me - to fit an image - to take over a role I was supposed to have with this male body of mine.
My friend said:
Well, know I know why some of your friends wondered when you started to transition - you look like a male impersonation.

Had I been acting all those years?
Yes - and no.
I tried my best to ignore what happened deep inside of me - although I knew instinctively it would never change - but at least I had to try, right?? Wrong!
I was just fooling myself - making things worse every day that I spent in denial of who I really was.

The tricky thing is this though:
I was not so much into make-up, dresses and dolls.
I didn’t fulfill any of the accepted stereotypes of what a girl is supposed to be like.
So how was I to know I was a girl??
Climbing trees? Yes absolutely - show me one and I’ll try to get up there.
Doing sports and being outdoors? Yes, the sooner the better - and can’t get enough of it.
Doing knitting crafts at school? No - not for me really.
Being with boys - no - not really - always felt kind of uncomfortable with what they were doing.
Joined the boy scouts but didn’t stay there long - not for me - too different a world where I felt I didn’t fit in.
Playing the guitar and making music? Yes please - don’t really want to stop playing and making music.

But then puberty came - the shock of dealing with changes I didn’t want - yet saw no chance of stopping them. I knew who I wanted to be - that girl on the picture there - what a desperate illusion - who was I kidding - my body couldn’t be changed - that is what I thought and believed in at that time.

Then that Christian and go-to-church-phase. This citation hits it bullseye how I felt and saw my life at that time:

I was condemned to live my life as a man

- no way out - backed up by church ethics and morals.
Yet my feelings inside didn’t change - they grew stronger and stronger each year - the desire to leave that male body behind somehow always found its way to get my attention.

Then there is the relationship issue:
Since I always liked girls - how for the life of me would I have known that I was a lesbian trans*girl... or at least a bisexual one??????
A trans*girl who is after boys - yes understandable - and after ruling out suppressed homosexuality that might have made sense to most people.

Yet here I was - this mixture of a lesbian/bisexual tomboy trans*girl personality .....


My first relationship ended in a fiasco - I couldn’t love myself but wanted to be like her instead.
When I told her she sought help from other people and I was to explain myself  why I was feeling that way and why I couldn’t accept to be male.
That experience made me feel so ashamed about how I felt that I swore to myself that I would lock up my secret and tell NO ONE EVER AGAIN - that lasted for 30 years - until my body made it clear to me - change or leave that life. And I chose to live.
So as you can see - I never really fit into any category myself.
People on the outside would place me in the male category - I became a loner - a lonesome girl who came alive at night - daydreaming my womanhood away - just to wake up in the morning asking myself if I had gotten completely crazy.

The point I want to make is this:
When you are born as the typical female that fits the girly stereotype - then it is »relatively« easy to know what’s wrong and get the cue that one is trans.
Yet I am a lesbian/bisexual tomboy - so how in the world could anybody guess I was trans? Well there were hints along the way - yet I believe you get where I am heading.
The only aspect where I could say for sure that something was totally wrong was when I took a close look at my body and my sexuality - both were always like an alien to me.
I didn’t respect and honor my body in those days - I used my body like a machine to get some spark out of life by doing extreme sports -  I tried to live a male stereotype that would never work for me - simply because I was not male.

Believe me when I say I tried to accept a sexuality that was assigned to me at birth - it didn’t work, has never worked!
But finally now with my HRT and my SRS - now I have a peace and a happiness I have never had before in my whole entire life - and it is just so right.

Why do I write about it?

Because I want to encourage those trans*people out there who might also be faced with the situation that all the trans*issue boils down to one point: your sexuality and your genitals.
For some people this is the only clue you will get to realize that you are trans.
It is not about the make-up or stereotypes of what a woman is, should be like, act like or behave like.
It is about how you feel about that sex you are born in and the gender you identify with. It might be different for some trans*women - but I believe there are enough trans*girls like me out there - and I want to encourage you to take an honest look at yourself - how you feel about your body, your sex and your genitals in the deepest, most honest way. It might open up the door to a happy life which you never believed possible, just because you forgot to check THAT corner of your personality.

Experienced specialists will help you to figure yourself out - yet only if they are open to trans*people - unfortunately there are therapists out there who don’t take trans*sexuality serious. It’s understood that these people will not be of any help at all.

No matter what - risk that honest and deep down look at yourself and dig up your feelings.
Our hearts and our bodies already know deep down inside - it’s all about the fact if you can or want to face it - no matter what stereotypes or role expectations might dictate - this is about the one and only person that is important in your life - and that is you.

This is one of those days........

The questions pops up now and again - why is it that my soul somehow chose to go into this life as a transsexual? The yearning I feel to have the physical body that so completely fits my gender - the way I see myself and the way I feel inside. Other people on the planet feel comfortable and completely at home in their skin - and don‘t even know that there are people in this world where this basic of all human aspects is so different.
To them being male or female is normal, looking in the mirror and seeing a female or a male face and body is so normal - they think about which aspect of their male or female body they would want different  - or more prominent - or more beautiful. The sex they experience is in accordance with their heart and mind - that is such a blessing - and they don‘t even feel, realize or see that.
Too basic is that aspect rooted in ourselves, too deep the concept to be whole and complete as to imagine it could be different - or that it could not be so.


So I sit here and look at this beautiful young girl, so female, so natural, so easy how everything comes to her - her voice, her movements, her feelings and her gestures. The way her face looks, her hair falls. I see that knowing that I never had those teen years where a woman finds her paths - her ways on what she believes to be important in her life, the roads to explore her own sexuality and personality. Tears running down my face - torn between the happiness that we get medical and surgical help to ease our situation and live a life close to what it could have been like  - and the dream of having lived my life with my sex and my gender playing the same song - being in tune.

I know what it feels like to go through a puberty that doesn‘t match what the mind wants to feel and see.
I know about the shame a trans*person faces when the idea of being different - being transsexual - becomes clear and real.
I know about the devastating and destructive effects of misunderstood religious views and ideas, branding me with the burn mark »not wanted by man - because believed impossible to be a part of creation«.
I know how it feels to be rejected by your own family who for whatever reason can‘t love you the way you are.

I also know how it feels when strangers come up to me saying - I admire you for how you stand up for yourself - I have greatest respect for the way you put into reality what you feel inside - how you live what you feel.
I also know how it feels when other trans*people or families say: thank you for your help - thank you for making me feel like being human - thank you for helping me/ us along to have visions of what the future can be like - and to have a happy kid.

I believe there is a reason why everything in life happens the way it does.

So there is a reason why my transition didn’t happen earlier - although there are so many moments when I wish I had done so - yet at that same instance I know there is no reason to blame myself for not having done so - because if I could have done so I would have done so. I believe the way it happened is the way it is best for me.

YET STILL....
Too many people don’t know the facts about us trans*gender people and too many have no idea what can be done once a trans*person is in your circles.

That is why I will devote time and love to spread the word on how families can help their maybe trans*kids to lead a normal life by freezing puberty - to win time to evaluate if the child is actually transsexual  - by freezing a puberty that doesn‘t swing with the song the soul wants to sing.
Should it turn out that at some stage during the puberty freeze the child should decide different - and she/he decides that the need for living in the so far affirmed gender turns out to be wrong - and that she/he will want to live in the sex that she/he was born in - THEN the puberty freeze gets stopped - and the puberty according to the physical sex assigned at birth will take its natural course - only a bit later on in life - no side effects.

Should the child stay its course and insist on living in the affirmed gender different from the sex assigned at birth - while going through intense psychometric testing - then cross gender hormone therapy is the only way to relieve the child of its burden and suffering.

Then see how a child springs back into life when cross sex hormone therapy induces the puberty that makes the soul sing the song of life out loud.
These children will be just like their non-trans*peers - you couldn‘t pick them out in a crowd as being trans*sexual if you had to. They will be spared all those surgeries and long tedious hours to make the physical female/male burden disappear that older transsexuals are willing to go through to finally find inner peace. All those numerous epilation sessions, the facial feminisation surgeries to remove the puberty induced hormone traits that define a person as male or female, the voice chord surgery, so a trans*woman finally sounds right to her own ears, breast augmentation - in case the hormones can’t change the body to match a female appearance and finally SRS surgery - the ultimate, irrevocable step to make a trans*woman feel at home in her own body.

Our bodies are the most amazing gifts we get in life - and I am so happy and thankful, that my body is willing to make and go through all those changes with me.

Yet it doesn‘t have to be this way - when parents and society learn to love children the way they are - give them chances to walk their path early in life.

Show all kids what it means to be loved - and if you happen to be blessed with trans*children give them the chance to life their life in their affirmed gender!
And when puberty sets in give them the chance of a puberty freeze to reflect on who they are - and should they stay the course then let them start the cross hormone therapy they are longing for so desperately - to open up a happy life for them!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=407602542742290&pnref=story

That will pay my flowing and falling tears justice - to see trans*children and their families leading happy lives - and maybe some of those very happy moments will reflect the life I didn‘t live but am now allowed to live so happily.