I started transitioning in 1987. I had been secretly dressing since puberty off and on. I never fit in with the whole boy-girl thing in school. I lost my dad to divorce when I was five and gained a brother. I lost my dad for good in a plane crash when I was five. Mom tried, but I never had a positive male role influence. They were all either just in it for sex or the good ones were married. Most were pricks and all I saw were good at exaggerating their importance and not being there in the crunch. I grew up hating men. But I really didn't realize it until we had to deal with my anger.
When I started seeing a therapist I was angry and frustrated. After therapy, I learned I hated men and I hated me because I was being raised as one. Keep in mind I was already in my 30s. So I made the obvious choice. I reasoned that if I hated myself because I hated men, then I would not be male. Simple. Right? It sounded like the perfect solution, to me.
The other factor was that growing up my only friends were female. Girls were the only ones that wanted to be my friend. When I was younger and not in school my mom had a coffee clatch with the mothers and women in the neighborhood. The mothers would bring their stay at home children to the morning meetings. Surprisingly they were all girls. So I played with girls and learned to see things from their point of view.
Also, at an early age, I wanted to wear my mom's clothes. There were nightgowns and dresses hanging outside my room that I would wear from time to time. I always thought there was something wrong with me. I began to keep my own stash of pantyhose. All of this continued even after I became a Christian. Until I left to join a youth ministry. For six years there was no opportunity and I was so busy developing into a witness for Jesus that I didn't think about it. Until my last staff position in a communal house. The boys had the basement and I was given the responsibility of organizing and maintaining the communal closet, where our unwanted clothes would go for the ones that came to us that needed clothes. Much of the clothes were from the girls upstairs. There were jackets, shoes, dresses, sweats, tops, bottoms, socks, etc.. There was a beautiful fur jacket I fell in love with and wore it when I could. That brought it all back again. It kind of surprised me because I had convinced myself I was cured of it. I was wrong. Oh, how wrong I was.
From there I actually had a girl want to be with me. She even changed my position at work so I was on her team. The house pastor did not like her and disparaged our relationship at every opportunity. We got tired of his pettiness and left. She and I married a month later. We moved to Kodiak Alaska. While there we had periods where there was no work and many days with nothing to do. We had a room in a house owned by a man and his eleven-year-old daughter. The daughter liked to hang out with my wife. This one day they were visiting and giggling. I was in the room but reading. All of sudden the girl said they were bored and wanted to do something fun and wanted me to join them. So I asked what they wanted to do and they showed me how they could use makeup to make our faces into upside-down faces. So I said I would join them. They had me sit in a chair and lay my head back and close my eyes. They giggled all through and just said it was going to be funny. When they were all done I expected to see a clown face. But what I saw took my breath away. I was a young girl. My wife had me put on her dress and they fixed my hair and had me wear her heels, gave me a purse and took my picture.