Im Afraid

[Rianna Humble]

This will be long, so if you don't like reading detailed answers, please feel free to skip to the next post

I use the word "crossing" to suggest another perception on crossdressing. I use the term as the act of our spirit to cross over to the unknown world. To our world of instincts, impulses, and emotions.

I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning, but in the end whether you call it cross-dressing, transvestism, corssing or cream-cheese the activity remains the same, so I will use your term for the purposes of this reply.

The reason why im writing this is because I have been around this site and i seen middle-aged men and older men still crossing. Which is perfectly fine, whatever makes you happy. The thing that bothers me is that i see myself in your place. Which scares me. Not because im afraid of rejection or feel shame or guilt. I am genuinely scared.

Im scared of realizing that what i feel as "me" is somehow always wrong.

Thanks to other "spiritually minded" people, I spent decades believing that who I am was "wrong" so I can sympathise with you on that score. The long-term result of that was depression leading to thoughts of self-harm or self-termination.

When I came to realise that what I do is a result of who I am (not the other way around), I was faced with a choice - accept who I am and find out what that means, or reject who I am with the obvious conclusion.

I don't want to be in your position. Because i want to deal with the hardships of life as 1 not as two. I don't want a different personality to get certain things from the world (attention, love, affection) just because the other is incapable of doing it. I want it to be all through one....ME! Not a side, Not a gender, but the androgynous ME!

I may occasionally refer to myself in terms of two people, but I have only ever been one. Every person is multi-faceted, so I believe that your attempt to reject different sides of who you are is not helpful. You will not act the same when you are at a rock concert as you would at a funeral. Does that make what you are doing wrong? If you are ONE person, with no sides, shouldn't you behave the same in all circumstances?

And if im still crossing at thirty then i feel what im writing now is empty.

How you view that at thirty will depend on your viewpoint at that age. You may feel that your reasoning was empty, or you may feel that there was truth behind what you wrote but it was only as complete as your life-experience to date. IMNSHO, no-one's life experience is ever complete for as long as they live and if we keep an open mind we can learn from others and from new experiences whether we be 16 or 116 (I am neither of those two ages).

My beliefs at age 54 are different to those I held at age 20. Does that mean that what I believed at age twenty was empty? Or does it mean that I have acquired new life experiences since then that have shed new light on my beliefs? Some things haven't changed fundamentally - such as my belief in the need for fairness, respect for others, and equality of opportunity for all or the fact that the team I support are still the greatest team in the world for me.

I have purged before. Each time different, in a different light. The last time was after a horrible birthday followed by couple of hours of crying/sleep intervals. It was then i realized that it is my younger self which needs to be loved. I crossed because i was incapable of loving myself since no one loved me. So i gave my younger self an illusion.

I hope I am wrong, but I feel that you are in danger of trying to make the facts fit the theory rather than examining whether your theory fits the facts.

Im an adult now (early twenties) and i can't willingly and consciously divulge in fantasies, in illusions anymore.

If you are absolutely positive that "crossing" is only a fantasy, you will have no difficulty in putting it away forever. From what you write, you have tried and failed more than once. Does that not tell you anything other than that the facts don't fit?

I have a few questions:

Did you ever think that you will never cross again? If so how many times? And how sure were you? What was your reasoning behind it?

How did it grow to be a bigger and bigger part of your life? When did you name her? Why?

Do you ever feel "spiritually" trapped by the clothes?

Rather then feeling guilty/shame afterwards do you ever feel empty?

I never went through the cycles of splurge and purge that many others here have been through. From time to time I would secretly borrow an article of clothing from someone and dress. Every time, I felt a great sense of peace until I remembered that the "spiritually-minded" people had told me that I was wrong, then I would feel guilt, never shame.

This grew to be a bigger part of me when I decided that rather than reject who I am, I would accept myself and choose to live.
When I joined this website, I still needed to hide my male identity to avoid causing extreme difficulties and mental anguish to certain people who I hold dear. I asked myself what my name would be if I were a woman and the name I have now seemed to fit me like a glove.

this philosophy that people on this site hold might do harm to us younger kids who might have different reasons for doing it.

This site doesn't hold any philosophy - it is an inanimate thing. The people on this site have a philosophy that allows them to support other people who cross-dress or who are friends/family/significant others of those who do. To say that this support can be harmful betrays either a lack of understanding of what support is or a crass attitude to those who try to help here. I hope that in your case it is the former.

you ever wonder if there are any straight gay guys just like there are gay straight guys?

I believe that you are confusing gender and sexuality. In relation to whether someone is gay or not, the term straight is normally used to mean heterosexual (men or women) and gay to mean homosexual (men). This being so, your proposition that there might be "straight gay guys" and "gay straight guys" makes no sense at all. How can you have a heterosexual homosexual or a homosexual heterosexual?

I believe that you are asking whether some cross-dressers may be hetero and some not. The answer to that is definitely yes there are some of each and also some bisexual cross-dressers, but their gender presentation is totally separate from their sexuality.

Please take the time to reflect on what is behind your fears. I get the distinct feeling from your posts in this thread that you are trying to reason your way out of accepting yourself for who you are and that part of the cause of this is that from a "spiritual" point of view you believe that to be other than cisgendered is morally wrong. As soon as you try to graft morality onto what for many (if not for all) is a product of their innermost being you begin to put an artificial straight-jacket onto yourself and those you so judge.

Others have commented on your question about where are the contributions from those who have stopped cross-dressing. There may be some for whom cross-dressing was a phase in their life-experience. I have never met any and I would not expect them to continue contributing to a support site for those who are cross-dressers, transsexuals, friends and loved-ones. There is no judgement intended in that statement.

:2c: