Perhaps this will sound like a fake story to you; I don't really care. I'm a paper pack-rat and could (given sufficient time) pull out the receipts and get doctor's reports and testimony from my wife and relatives to prove what I say. Oh yeah, and I have some date-stamped pictures too.Originally Posted by sheidelmeidel
6 years and 11 months ago (to within a day), I suddenly got extremely sick. I'd been under a quite high stress load, and when my tasks were finished, I didn't just get a little tired, I had what in the old days would be called a "Nervous Breakdown". I was barely functional for the next year, but had no idea what was wrong with me: I'd gone to a doctor within 6 weeks and he put me on his wait-list saying he could take me "in 2 to 3 months", and I put my trust in him... I was still on his wait list a year later. Meanwhile, I was in terrible shape, collapsing from exhaustion 45 minutes to 90 minutes after I woke up, rarely making it to work, rarely able to get myself out the door, unable to visually focus on the horizon, unable to initiate anything, with a temper so short that half of a word from my wife was enough to make me furious. And I had no clue at all -- not until about this time 6 years ago, when I was bored and looking for anything interesting in the paper, and happened to read the requirements for a clinical trial that was starting up, and matched 11 of the 12 possible symptoms where matching 2 to 3 was enough to qualify you for the trial. The clinical trial was related to clinical Depression: so I finally had a name for what I was suffering from, major Depression.
Now it is literally impossible to understand major Depression unless you've had a taste of it yourself. After-all, "what's so hard about" (say) just taking some dirty dishes from the counter and putting them in the dish-washer? If you haven't Been There and Done That, then if you can't/ won't do something as easy as that, you're just being laaaazy. Those who have suffered from Depression will, however, understand when I say that when I approached the counter (after postponing the task for 6 days), the closer I got, the more I felt like throwing up.
Depression isn't just "you are somewhat unhappy at your life circumstances": Depression is a serious chemical imbalance in the brain that can lead to all kinds of problems. For example for me it was accompanied by major panic attacks. "Panic" is an often misunderstood medical term: it isn't phobia, it isn't running and hiding because of a fear that one is conscious of: instead it is any time that your mental activity manifests in physical illness. For me it meant spending literally hours a day on the toilet (gastro-intestinal effects are the most common panic symptom, affecting 30% of panic suffers... but rarely for as many hours a day as it was affecting me.)
When I did finally get in to see (a different) doctor close to 14 months after my initial collapse, the doctor looked at me, pushed briefly on my skin and watched the return to colour as the blood flowed back to the area, and informed me that without question I had been suffering from Depression for not just a year, but for at least 5 years before that, probably longer. He was looking at how yellow my skin was, which was a function of my cortisone level, which was so high that my brain must have been fighting with itself for a minimum of 6 years by the time I saw him. (In retrospect, knowing what to look for, we can date the onset to at least 16 years before present -- that is, at least 9 years before my collapse.)
The doctor put me on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication: between those two, I was at least able to get to work -- but I was still severely sick.
And then after being on medication for 6 months, I discovered that I was a cross-dresser: I had, from time to time, in the years previous, put on some of my wife's things "to see how they look" so I could shop better for her (I loved shopping for clothes for her), but it wasn't until 5 years ago that things clicked in my mind and I realized that I wanted to wear women's clothes... in public! By that point, I'd already been together with my wife for 9 years.
For various reasons, I did not tell my wife immediately, but within 3 weeks I was out in public in a skirt in a major mall, without even any kind of wig (but with some lipstick, probably): something that a number of the members here haven't been able to bring themselves to do in 40+ years of knowing about their cross-dressing. I joined the local cross-dressing club within 3 months of realizing I was a cross-dresser (would have been a month sooner but for accidents of communication timing).
And what I found was that cross-dressing was one of only two things that I could actually initiate and plan and drag myself out the door for, and that within about 3/4 of an hour of getting out the door dressed, that the cloud would lift off my mind, I would be able to focus and think in long coherent stretches, and my feelings that "life is never going to get better!" would fall away. Cross-dressing was, in short, to me, a better "medication" by far than anything to be found in a pharmacy.
Years later, what we (my doctor and therapists) have come to understand is that I was almost certainly born with an unusual brain, and that my brain has been in gender conflict with itself since age 5 at least (that is, we can trace back incidents and behaviours at least that far.) When I was younger and more resilient and had less responsibilities, my brain used to be able to compensate -- but under the heavy stress I had at work and in some other areas of my life, it stopped being able to deal with the situation.
You might be wondering what this all has to do with "ruining the life" of a spouse by coming out. The answer to that is this: that as long as I did not come out, the brain conflict remained and intensified rapidly, and if I would have kept my cross-dressing hidden, I *would* have collapsed again, and probably would have lost my job, with it not being clear that I would ever again have been in a state to take on another job that required high intellectual functioning. I might have been able to handle stock-boy... if the company was forgiving about not always being able to get to work within 3 hours of the scheduled time. Even with the medication, I would have been left pretty much in a state where my wife had to take care of me as a sick and probably fairly unpleasant person.. "fight or flight" reactions. The alternative was to acknowledge my gender differences and deal with them openly and wear the clothes as I needed to wear -- and by so doing, heal into an unusual but functioning person.
Thus you can see that if I had remained in the closet, my wife's life would have been ruined even more surely than would be the case upon coming out. A secret kept locked inside me that was making me sick was something my wife could not have coped with, as she would have been missing essential information about what was really happening. The secret revealed... it isn't the happiest of things in her life, but it can be adapted to.
I have a couple of GG relatives whose lives are absolute messes, who are still being emotionally abused by their NPD (Narcistic Personality Disorder) husbands more than a year after separation, ex's-to-be that retain their hold by refusing to settle financially or emotionally nor to do anything about making the breakup official so that the GG's can get on with their lives.
Me... I go to work, I pay all of the joint bills (except the cell phone), I do what I can to help my wife with her very sick mother, I hold my wife tenderly and comfort her... and I happen to wear borderline women's clothes much of the time. It isn't always easy for her, but some compromise in a relationship is a big difference compared to having your life "ruined" (e.g, like my unfortunate relatives' lives have been.)
