rambling

I would have to stamp you with Transgender =p If I had a stamp that is lol
I started out cross-dressing, at first it was an enjoyment thing at a young age, my mother encouraged it, Later I would do it just to masturbate, but as time progress it grew, regardless of how much I tried to repress it. I felt good in women's clothes, I felt right. I would use porn as well, and put myself in the female's position, mentally.
It took one night of experimentation to raise my courage. One night I went out to walk my new puppy, dressed as a woman. It felt great. no words to describe the experience properly.

Your first step however is to consult a Gender therapist =) from there s/he can recommend you to a doctor in the area whom has Trans experience. after a few sessions they may even recommend you be put on hormones.

Lastly welcome to the sisterhood =)

 

Welcome to EC, thanks for sharing your story with us

I have a few questions that might seem a bit strange, but I will explain them later if you answer them for me

1. What is your future like as a man? What do you see? How is it different as a woman?

2. You say you almost WANT to be trans, so what happens if we all tell you that you ARE NOT trans? What do you do then?

 

Warning: I'm going to pull apart your responses and try and make sense of them. If I ask anything that feels seems uncomfortable to you then please say so. I don't expect you to answer ANYTHING I ask, all I ask is that you consider the answers. Chances are if the question makes you uncomfortable it's important...


I guess I just don't see myself growing at all as a man. I've lived the same live, same look and haircut, same reserved demeanor, for the entirety of my life. These days everything I do just seems rather pointless.

Why?

You have control over most aspects of your life, what is stopping you from making positive changes? Why do you feel you need to be a woman to do that?

As a woman I feel like I'd be able to be more social,

Where does this increased social aptitude come from? Is it a confidence thing? If so, what makes you think you would be more confident?

if I was content with myself, I'd feel more motivated doing everyday things, whether it's working towards a career or anything else.

The most important part of this section is the word IF. IF you were content, IF you felt more sociable, IF you were more motivated. What makes you think this will happen?

The thing about this whole situation is, I don't know what I'd do if I weren't trans. I don't want to be in this mental state the rest of my life, even if I decide that I'd be able to physically tolerate my own body.

OK this bit is difficult to word...I removed a question from earlier in this response because I wanted to highlight something you've said here.

Originally I had intended to ask you the following:

What makes you think you will be more confident/content/sociable/motivated when presenting as female?

Now I deleted it because of you mentioned the idea of not changing your body. Some people are able to live their lives without changing their bodies or even their presentation because they know who they are inside and the people they care about treat them that way.

The reason I am bringing this up is because I want to imagine, just for a moment, that this was something you were able to do. You just accepted who you are inside but did nothing else. How would that knowledge change your attitude?

What I mean by that is, you are saying that if you ARE trans you feel like you would be more motivated and your life would be better. So let's say you are, how motivated do you feel?


It's not something that's causing me to become suicidal or self-harming, I do admit that there's a possibility of me not being trans. It's however enough of a discomfort to cause unhappiness.

Talk us through this discomfort, keeping in mind that you've already told us that everything is a bit 'samey' in your life.

Would I be able to live with that unhappiness? Sure, I can "curb" my urges and feelings, but I think I'd be able to live a happier life as a woman. I think that's a testament to why I "want" to be transgender, so I can turn my life around, but that begs the question: why not just do it? I just don't want to make the mistake and leave everything behind to find myself longing for the past when it's all said and done.

Might I recommend that for a moment, rather than thinking about it in extremes, you consider little things.

Stop thinking "I want to become a woman" and start thinking "What feels good to me". If you really want it, I'll give you my big 'transition is a lie' speech :3

 

Definitely a confidence thing. I have cross-dressed, and am pretty confident in my appearance.

When you cross-dress, how do you feel? How is it different to when you dress like a man?

I guess that's the thing that's keeping me back. What if I'm not content? All I can speculate is that I'd be more content than I am now due to confidence, other factors, whatever it may be. But do the benefits outweigh the costs? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

OK, you're getting the speech....maybe a condensed version since it's 2am, but by the sounds of things you could use it. I'll do it and the end of this post.

In terms of the motivation, I always think back to an article I read that summed it up nicely. It talked about transpeople finding pleasure in the everyday things, even the menial stuff, and just being able to live a full life. I can't really explain why, but seeing as I'm not getting the most out of life now, I think a change could only make things better.

I call bullshit on that. The article, not you. Pleasure in everyday things? Nah.

Do you think I enjoy dusting because I'm trans? How about showering, going to work, watching TV? Do you think those things become FUN when someone is trans?

Of course you don't. You know that's not how it works. There IS a difference, but it doesn't work quite like that.

Let's take a basic example...my bedroom for example. It was, at one stage, what my mum referred to as a 'cave'. It was dark, messy, full of crap and it looked horrible. Nobody really wanted to be in there. Heck, the only reason I was in there all the time was because I had nowhere else to be. I could sit at my computer for hours and just vegitate. You ask any trans person how many times they've done a supposedly 'fun' activity and hated every minute of it for no apparent reason. I'd bet most of us have done it, I know I did.

See being in the wrong skin makes everything CRAP. Not for any reason you can necessarily put a finger on, it just feels crap. Now when you start coming out of that, it's not that these activities get any more 'fun', they just don't have that same level of gloom attached. There isn't a sense of 'why bother' about it, because now you feel like a real person.

My point is, I recognize a lot of the feelings you are expressing as ones I felt myself, just don't fool yourself into thinking that transitioning or accepting yourself will suddenly make you happy and make daily life fun and exciting. It just takes away some of the crap.

It's just something that's occupied my mind quite a bit in the recent months, to the point where it's interfering with sleep, school, how I further see myself, etc. Basically it's like living with a secret or an unresolved problem your entire life. It's something that, if it persists, it starts to build up and get in the way of even trivial things, let alone major things.

Sorry if this one is hard to do, but again, it's worth doing. How specific can you get? You've told me how it affects you, but you haven't really told me what IT is! What feelings do you get? What do you think about at night when you need to sleep? When you're trying to work at school what thoughts nag away at you?

I'm not sure what you mean by your "transition is a lie", so I'd be all ears if you're willing. But anyways, what feels good? I like being confident, whether I want to admit it or not, I like attention and I think as a woman, all aspects of social and sexual life would be better than where I currently stand. It all sounds really shallow when you get down to it, but I really just want to leave this world having lived the best and most enjoyable life as possible. Hopefully these provided at least some points of clarity, I need to be able to answer these questions.

I don't want to spend my whole time being the messenger of doom and gloom, but there is one thing that keeps coming up and it's going to bug the SHIT out of me if I don't mention it.

Specifically, you keep mentioning how things would be better 'as a woman'. Now this sentence fragment worries me.

It worries me because I can't tell where reality ends and fantasy begins. I have no idea if the things you assume about women and their place in society is accurate, I'm certainly led to believe it's true but I don't have the experience to back it up. But let's assume for a moment that it is. Let's assume that women have certain 'benefits' within life just by being women, whatever you happen to think those things are.

I'm trying hard to word this without coming off as needlessly miserly but still realistic...what makes you think that any of those benefits would apply to you if you started living as a woman?

Anyway, the transition is a lie speech...SUPER CONDENSED MODE ACTIVATED!

Right. So you ask your average moron on the street what happens to trans people and you will get the answer "sex change". More often than not, even the more accepting people in the world seem to think that you just get a sex change and it's over and done with.

Now if you move into the better informed areas of society and you start to hear this word "transition" thrown about. "Trans people TRANSITION into their acquired gender" is a phrase you will probably hear quite a bit when people who think they know lots about trans issues want to talk about change.

Thing is, people don't really appreciate what that word actually means. I find that a lot of people use 'transition' in exactly the same way 'sex change' or 'the chop' is used, it just sounds less offensive. For a lot of people 'transition' is this massive event. A massive event that might take a little while, but it is basically accepted to have had an obvious beginning and an obvious end.

If you take me for example. If you asked my family when my transition started, they would most likely tell you it was 27th October 2013 (although I doubt they would get the exact date) xD

Why october 2013? Because that's when I went full time. On the 26th I told my sisters (they were the last people I had to tell) and on the 27th Holly was allowed into the world forever.

Literally in the space of one day I went from living as a man to living as a woman.

Was that my transition done?

No, certainly not. I'm not done yet. I may be living as a woman by I still needed to change my name legally. I've done that now, started the process in February. I still need hormones and surgeries. Will I be done then? Who knows.

But more importantly, it sure as HELL didn't START then. When we ask my family when my transition started we get october 2013. So what if you ask me?

If you ask me, it could be what...May 2013? That was when I gave in and bought panties online. What about christmas 2011 when I had my formerly long hair in ribbons to make the children at school laugh? Perhaps earlier...what about in 2006, the last time I painted my nails black? Keep going? What about 2001 when I first told my dad I wasn't ever having my hair cut again?

Thing is, I remember those events and not ONCE did I think "I'm doing this because I'm a woman". Even when I bought panties! I bought those in the middle of a panic attack. I justified it by saying that I was buying a sex toy and it was just a fetish...

But all of those things I did because it felt right to do somewhere inside. Some part of me said 'yeah, go for it, why the fuck not!'

I didn;t start to accept things until perhaps, July 2013, and even then I wasn't SURE. I started with small things. I shaved off my beard. I shaved my chest. Then my legs. Then my arms. I grew my nails and started growing my hair. I bought a wig and a skirt and a womens top. I bought underwear, several shitty bras that were no good. I joined a cross dressers forum and hated it, so I left and ended up here.

Thing is, I don't know when my transition started, because I never sat there and said "I will now become a woman". I don;t know when my transition will end because I don't know what I'll need or what will be available in the future. Will it be finished with SRS? Who knows.

Now that probably seems long and rambling and might not seem to tie in with what you were talking about, but it all needed to be made clear first.

Now you say you are worried about making mistakes. You are worried about getting it wrong and having to take things back.

Initially I thought I was just bisexual, and in the space of a few months I went from 'What if I'm bisexual' to 'I am DEFINITELY transsexual'. I experienced the same fears as you. It's a thing and it's not something I think anyone would choose if it wasn't necessary or if it wasn't going to make them feel better about themselves.

Now you are worrying about taking things back. Specifically, you are worrying about saying "I'm trans. I am a woman!" and then having to take that back, and you know what, I would be too. That would scare the HELL out of me.

Which is why transition can't be viewed as one big thing. It's a million tiny things. Tiny things you do because it feels right, and if it doesn't feel right you stop.

I wore wigs for a week or so, and they felt fake so I stopped. I tried lipstick and I HATE it. I'm no good at make-up so I don't bother. I wore breast forms, and while I know I need my own breasts, I don't like wearing falsies so I stopped. These are all things I did and took back. Little tiny insignificant things.

If I decide tomorrow I want to try wearing dresses, I will. If I don't like it, I'll stop and I'll go wear skirts instead. Wearing a dress is not the same as transitioning. It might be part of it for some people, but it isn't for me and that's fine.

The thing is you need to sit there and think "I will do this thing because I want to", take a little thing, whatever that little thing is and do it. If you like it, great, keep doing it, if not, don't do it again.

You're not looking for 'a woman' you are looking for YOU, whoever you happen to be. If you experiment and discover you're a woman, great. If you discover you're a guy, wonderful. If you discover you are both or neither or one some days and something else other days or anything else at all, FANTASTIC because you found YOU.

Transition isn't supposed to be something you actively DO, it's just the name we give to all the little changes we make to feel like ourselves. It applies to EVERYONE not just trans people.

 

Suit yourself.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.