I guess I knew this but today I believe I understand it better.

[Anne Elizabeth]

I think I get it now. Really I have known foe quite some time. But a couple comments recently about identity slapped me across the face. I spent my first marriage thinking what I should do as a husband and father but I went into this as most have with a secret. Marriage did not last long. Then moved, different job, found a terrific girl, one thing led to another and here I am 30 years later. Same thing that secret. I spent a lot of time wanting to be accepted by others, accepted in the crowd. Wanting to be something. Chasing rainbows. I always moved to those things that I got lots of positive feedback from. ( I believe or think that most people are like that) We all want to do something that makes us feel good about ourselves. We all want to be accepted by the world. But, When we have a secret, a, should we say a second identity that always interferes with our regular struggles that complicates things. This identity caused by what ever seems to always wants out, always seems to demand things upon us that we try so hard to deny. We box up those feelings and try to keep a lid on it. In the process of trying to keep those feelings boxed up we build walls around us, we hold people at bay, we don't let others in, our spouses suffer because we are so afraid of judgment form them. Our families get by and do OK but it becomes soul crushing. You see we have built the wall around ourselves which also has a box holding our true identity with a lid on it that we try to keep on. But you see we are just people and no matter how hard we try to be something we don't succeed because that identity in that box wants out so bad. We do stupid things, We hold back, We fail to really feel. Eventually that identity in that box, that soul we have crushed up and stuffed away keeps growing and wanting out. That Identity is our true self. That identity is who we always wanted to be but could never admit to. Admit to others and most of all admit to ourselves. I think that allowing that identity out allows us to become human again, to feel right within ourselves, allows us to become the person that we should have been all along. Most of all that smashed up crushed soul begins to grow again and it becomes a plant that someday will eventually bloom into a beautiful flower. However, as with a flower it need nurture, water, care and love to grow. Just like we need nurture from loved ones, and love and care form those around us, Hrt and maybe even surgery (or pruning like a plant to grow well) to really become ourselves.. And that I believe is where people say I finally feel right with myself, I feel natural. I have become the person I was meant to be all along.

These are my thoughts on the subject, Comment if you will but please remember that these are my feelings, thoughts and observations. Yours may be completely different and I respect that.

Love

Anne Elizabeth

[ReineD]

I don't blame you for being near the point of explosion after having bottled everything up all these years. So now that you know that bottling things up is not healthy, will you consider going out and interacting with others as Anne Elizabeth? If you are not ready to come out to everyone that you know yet, you could begin to go out to selected places. It's a big world.

[MatildaJ.]

Eventually that identity in that box, that soul we have crushed up and stuffed away keeps growing and wanting out. That Identity is our true self...that smashed up crushed soul begins to grow again and it becomes a plant that someday will eventually bloom into a beautiful flower.

I appreciate that these are your thoughts and your feelings and are valid. But it makes me very sad to think that someone I know and love might be walking around feeling that way, as if their whole life up to now, their whole life shared with other people, was a fraud. Is it perhaps possible to let the feminine side out, while still honoring some aspects of the persona you created over many years? Even if you're truly a woman, most people have a mix of feminine & masculine aspects, and so maybe the masculine persona you created over decades of living in the world is still true to some part of your identity?

[Rianna Humble]

In my experience, a lot of my life pre-transition was a fraud, but there are some aspects that were basically the true me just with a window-dressing on that didn't quite fit. I think that is what one very good friend meant when she told me that I am much nicer than Robert used to be.

Other friends have said that they still recognise some of Robert's characteristics in me but that they are now expressed differently.

I believe that this is also the understanding that Anne Elizabeth is sharing with us from her own perspective.

[Leah Lynn]

I must admit there have been some good times had in those days. Not a lot, but enough to push that thing to the back corner for a while. I've had experiences that I wouldn't want to relinquish. Even in denial, one can have a good time or two. Still, they do not add up to a sum greater than the need to be one's true self.

Yet, all in all, I was a fraud.

Leah

[Anne Elizabeth]

JessM:

You state "their whole life shared with other people, was a fraud."
Maybe I need to rethink this a bit. I did like what I wrote, and after reading your post and the others (Thanks for your heartfelt comments) The fraud part made me think more and I guess what I am trying to say is; being my true self growing up my interactions with everyone else would have been totally real and not stunted, shall we say. I have had a pretty good live but I think that had I not had this secret, Had my interactions with others not been stunted. Had I been able to live TRUE TO MYSELF with out any undertones it would have been a WOW life.

Now I know what it was, and it is past, now I have to live it and make the very best of the next half century!!

[MatildaJ.]

Yes, I think it's great to look forward and live as full a life as you can!

It's always hard to tell what's going on in someone else's head, and I guess I'm personally anxious that my husband will look back on these years we're sharing as fake. I don't mind imagining him thinking "those years could have been better" (I'm sure that's always true) but I don't want him to look back and say it was all a big lie.

Thanks for being open to reassuring my anxiety a bit; I'm happier imagining him saying "it was a pretty good life, even when I wasn't being open with everyone." But I'm curious, when you look around at other people you know, do you think most of them have had a WOW life? I'm not so sure...

[dreamer_2.0]

Coincidentally at my last early session we discussed this inner-girl being locked in a box and she's trying to get out. Much of what we discussed is similar to your thoughts. I'm supposed to try and get to know this girl, not sure how to do that.

All this time I've figured the desire to be a woman was just an irrational "want", an obsessive desire. Could it be that the girl in the box is the real me? How could one even determine that? Is that, like with you, the real me?

I suppose the mask I wear outside the house would be the equivalent of living a fraudulent life.

[MatildaJ.]

I suppose the mask I wear outside the house would be the equivalent of living a fraudulent life.

I wish people were drawn to happier metaphors: I like to think of transsexuals as caterpillars, who begin to realize that they need to go through a difficult chrysalis stage before emerging as a butterfly. That doesn't mean that caterpillars are frauds; just that they now get to look forward to a more exciting life than they realized before.

[DebbieL]

I wanted to be a girl from the day I found out that I wasn't one, and could never be one. When I was 5, I thought girls just had longer hair, and I wanted to grow my hair long so I could be a girl too. Then my little sister was born. I still played with the girls, because I liked them better than boys. When I was caught in a girl friend's pretty dress, tights, and shoes, her mother told the PTA, the teacher, and the Principal that I was never to play with girls again.

When the teacher told me that I had to play with the boys, I was sad, but I tried. By the second day, it had broken down to the point where all of the boys in my class were throwing rocks at me, hitting me in the head several times, one time just missing my eye. I wanted to be a girl more than ever, but since they were beating me up because I was a "Sissy", I realized quickly that I had to pretend I wasn't a girl. I hated boys. I isolated. I refused to read in the classroom. My teacher moved me to the "Slow" side of the room. When the "Fast" side of the room started reading a book I had already read in my old school, I decided I didn't even belong in the school. I isolated even more.

At home, because I was afraid of being beat up for being a sissy, I would lock myself in the bathroom and put on mom's "church clothes". I wanted to be pretty but I was still way to small to fit anything. Mom eventually caught me, and told me she loved me, but a few days later, she had seen her therapist and was terrified for me. She had found out that - back in 1960, the "cure" for transsexuals was shock therapy, and if that didn't work, lobotomy. She was terrified that if people found out, they would turn me into a vegetable.

So for me, it literally became a case of life or death. I was afraid that if I was caught, or if I told anybody, they would put me in a hospital, do terrible things to me, and maybe even kill me. I felt like a Jewish girl in Nazi Europe. I could hide, pretend to be something else, but if they found out what I REALLY was, they would do terrible things to be before they killed me.

I also suffered from Asthma, and it was so bad, having been hospitalized over 20 times in a single year, that they put me in a research study. They quickly realized that I was happier and healthier when I was spending most of my time around girls. I was 8 years old, so it wasn't even that I wanted them sexually, I just liked girls and feared boys. When they tried to put me with boys, I almost had to be hospitalized again.

They thought they could teach me to control my emotions, so they had me see a psychologist 4 days a week, for an hour a day. A few times, I told him I wanted to be a girl, but he refused to even let me talk about it. He just said "You can't be a girl, so we can't talk about it". I heard about Christine Jorgensen when the movie came out. I was about 10 years old. I asked the psychologist - who I was seeing about twice a week, if I could be like Christine Jorgensen. My mother had also found me sleeping in her lingerie. She and dad read the book and realized that what they did to Christine was more like castration than actually providing a fully functional female form. There would be no ability to enjoy sex because there would be not clitoris. They tried to discourage me.

About that time, my Dad tried to have the "Birds and Bees" talk. Probably because I wanted to be a girl. He explained the difference between the two, and told me about male and female puberty. When I pointed out that I didn't have testes, he drew a picture, showing how my testes were still up inside me, like ovaries. He told me that if they didn't come down by themselves, the doctor would perform surgery. I don't remember if I told him I never wanted them to come down.

My mother knew, but refused to talk about it. My dad knew but refused to talk about it. I decided it was unsafe to talk about it, or tell anyone.
I withdrew even further, spending nearly all of my free time reading, and solitary hobbies like electronics, radio, and chemistry. I also learned how to cook, crochet, knit, sew, do bead work, weave, and clean house. I liked doing housework, and because I did it, my mom was able to get a job.

For nearly 30 years, I was like a spy, keeping my secret from nearly everyone. Not telling anyone who didn't have a "Need to Know". I told my girl-friend, fully prepared to move out if she rejected me, but she pretended to be accepting. Since she accepted, I proposed and we got married. 12 years, 2 kids, and one divorce later, I found out that she never truly accepted me. Even THAT was a lie, for both of us. I lied by telling her I only wanted to dress at home, when I really wanted to transition.

The hardest part of all, was that I felt like I had to work twice as hard, accomplish twice as much, and be extraordinary, especially professionally, just to SURVIVE. I would get acknowledgement and recognition, but in the back of my head I would be thinking "If you knew I was really a girl, would you be giving me this award?".

When I was 30, I came out for the first time. It cost me my job, my family, my home, and many of my friends. On the other hand, I was astonished at how quickly they were replaced by people who wanted to know Debbie, who loved her, and wanted to be part of her life. Even my employer was prepared to support me in transition. The thing that hit me hardest was hearing a transsexual who had transitioned talking about how she had to keep her past as a boy a secret. It was just another flavor of "spy world". Keep in mind that in those days, transsexuals had no legal rights, no "special protections", and were often treated like sex offenders. When they were attacked, the police did little to help, but if the girl fought back and won, she faced the maximum penalties.

It's hard to imagine how far we have come just in the last 3 years. But there is much farther to go.

I'm now transitioning again, and this time I have a supportive partner (wife), a therapist, good community, and even an employer who is supportive. There may still be places where Debbie won't be welcome, but at least I won't have to pretend, and I'll know where I really stand.

Too long a response - sorry!

[Anne Elizabeth]

I am sorry I did not think that I had implied loser status to being a fraud or even being a fraud. I believe that being a fraud, or being a different person that I should have been, or hiding who I really am stunted and stunts the interactions with others and a true relationship cannot exist. Loser no, never. Fraud not really but a different person yes. Also on the other side of the coin. Being trans was who I was and who I am. Therefore, I was actually being myself in all interactions with others. However, hiding and keeping a secret of this monumental proportion, holding back for fear of discovery, not being my whole self then actually stunted relationships that were good but could have been better. I suppose that there were many times that I held back and should have let go. Now today the best way to look at it is to think yes my last 50 years were affected and stunted. However, there were many great times birth of children, love relationships, marriage to a woman that I still don't know how she can handle this, (This is actually teaching me what love is and quite possible what it means to be a caring person and a terrific woman), taking kids to the park and having fun, watching children grow, trying to help them develop, Grandkids, vacations, the list can go on and on. I need to understand that and constantly keep the treasures in my mind as I progress further in life. Because now LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO LIVE REGRETS AND LIFE IS NOT LONG ENOUGH TO ENJOY IT TO THE FULLEST AND BECOME THE PERSON YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE!!!