I knew from an early age that I was different. But I didn't know just how different.
As a child I had a difficult time of things. I had meningitis as an infant, and epilepsy from the age of 8 until 16. I felt alienated not just from others, but from myself. Childhood was a nightmare. Then, a few years ago, I read the following on a support mailing list:
REGRESSION DURING EARLY TRANSITION
One theory making the rounds of TS care providers is that of personality defence during childhood. This theory says that when a child is placed in a situation that threatens the child's sense of self the child erects a persona to deal with the situation while the core personality disassociates from it.This is very similar to abused children who are faced with physical or emotional harm from care givers. The abused child must maintain an emotional bond with a dangerous world. In order to emotionally survive the child's personality fragments, each part to a certain emotional need. Thus the child who is beaten or worse by Daddy is not the same child that is cared for by that same parent. This leads to adult Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), a potentially devastating condition where the various personalities may not share the same memories or motives!
In transsexual children the persona that is erected is not fractured, or even very distinct. The memories are not segregated, nor are the motives. The persona has only one function, keep the world from noticing the gender identity of the core personality. The down side is that this persona will in effect, shield the core from direct emotional involvement with other people. Thus the core is spared the give and take that are part of the maturation process. It can also shield the core from feeling the love of parents, siblings, and even mates.
Thus during transition, when the persona is abandoned in favor of direct core personality involvement, the individual will regress to the maturity of the core personality. It can also expose the core personality's feelings that s/he is not really loved because that core has only felt that love through the cotton wool protection of the assumed persona which has left the scene...
I read the above, and the penny dropped. I knew that it accurately described what had happened to me.
Life had been tough. I hadn't been able to cope. The core of my identity (what I call my Inner Child) I withdrew deeply inside of myself. Outside I erected a "fake" persona to deal with the world, to take all the blows and cop all the shit. I was born male, and everyone around me treated me as a boy, so that fake persona was a boy too.
But my core identity, the part of me that I'd withdrawn for safe keeping, well that was a girl. And therein lies the difference. I can never truly say why that part of me is a girl, but I have to accept it as being the way things are.
But I didn't for a long time.
I didn't have a name for the sort of person I was until I read it in a book when I was 13. Then I knew -- "transsexual". But knowing this didn't make it any easier. I went into a state of denial. But being in denial didn't stop the fear I had of revealing myself. I thought that if I did, my family would "put me away". I was shy anyway, so I just withdrew more into myself.
School and High School were nightmares. Everybody probably thought that I was gay. I had a fear of this myself, though I didn't fully understand what it meant. I was so full of fear and insecurity that few people got close me. I hid in the libraries between classes. I ignored any advances, never went dancing or other forms of socializing. I was a self imposed outcast and misfit.
I joined war games clubs for a while. It was an easy way to interact with others without getting too close. I got involved in Science Fiction Fandom, thinking that it would be a friendly space for me. It was as far as that went, but because I'd never be honest and open myself, there were limits to my involvement. I became addicted to pinball machines and video games. I'd play them endlessly while waiting for trains and buses. I watched lots of films. I crossdressed in secret, going through purges when the fear and guilt got too much.
I did an awful lot of things to distract myself from myself. A lot of this was obsessive, addictive and compulsive behaviour, and I developed codependent and sex & love addictions along the way. The idea is a simple one. I'd say to myself "I'll be OK if I'm in a relationship" or "I'll be OK if I just have sex" or "I'll be OK if..."
It's that if that's the problem, because when you get what you fantasize about that will validate you, and it doesn't, you're in trouble. When I finally lost my virginity at the age of 26, I fell apart. The world didn't change just because I had sexual intercourse with someone else, it stayed just the same. So I had to have something wrong with me, didn't I?
I had a nervous breakdown over this issue. And still I didn't come honest with myself.
Instead I kept on looking for a "magic bullet" that would fix things for me, that would make me OK. But nothing would because really, I wasn't broken. I got into relationships, they just "seemed to happen". But ultimately they weren't very good ones, because I had a hidden motive for being in them. I thought that if I was in a relationship with a woman it "proved" that I was a man. It didn't, all it proved was that I was insecure.
The second relationship I had was with a transsexual woman. I was living my life through her. I understood her better than she knew. After she had her reassignment surgery, the relationship started to break down. It was then that I started to be more honest with myself, with who I am. The eventual outcome was that we broke up, and I finally started my own gender transition.
At age 36, it was about time!
I'd like to say that after this, I lived "happily ever after", but it just ain't so. Being honest with myself after such a long time takes a bit of effort. If I'm not careful, I fall into those same old patterns of denial and obsession. When I began my transition I made the minimum amount of change to myself in the most conservative way I could.
And that didn't work. I found that it wasn't just my gender I was changing, but my whole way of life. Taking the easy way just landed me in the same problems I had before. I still looked for sex to make me feel OK, and hoped for an easy fulfilling relationship. It took a trip to Sydney to start sorting myself out. At the end of that trip I realized that I could no longer live in Perth (where I'd been for most of my life), that I could no longer be a public servant (I'm currently studying visual arts at university) and became pagan.
I had to take the hard way to be me. I still have problems, but in general life is more fulfilling now. That's because I'm no longer living a lie. And I think that being honest with myself has to be the basis of my decisions nowadays. Anything else is lunacy.
I just have to be me.