You might say that I am a late bloomer, but actually I am a late in acceptance. My desire to be a girl and my identification as a girl goes back to my earliest childhood memories, with occasional teenage cross dressing. After a psychotic collapse accompanied by suicidal tendencies and self harming in my college years at 19, I recovered enough to have therapy when I was 20. I told the therapist that I wanted to be a girl and that I hated my genitals. This was back in 1967, there was no knowledge then about what it was to be transgender, so the psychiatrist just tried to convince me that it was fine to be a man! I also certainly did not understand myself.
Two year later an amazing thing happened that saved me from a life of despair. I met a women, nine years my senior, that unconditionally accepted and loved me, and that made all the difference! We are still together 48 years later.
About ten years ago, thanks to the internet, I began to understand who I was and what all those feelings and desires in me that I had hated so much were OK. I began what you might call a slow, but steady transition to living my life as a women about six years ago. I started to buy my own clothes instead of borrowing my wife's, had my ears pierced, joined this forum, came out to my children and siblings, and even spent two months entirely female on holiday in California.
Two months ago I started therapy again after a 50 year break! Very different this time, with the therapist's recommendation I have an appointment with an endocrinologist on November 20 to begin HRT.
It is like a childhood dream come true.
Originally Posted by Kaitlyn Michele
