My former therapist figured out I was trans before I did, I think. She asked me pointblank back in 2014 if I would cut off my breasts if I could.
I didn’t figure out I was trans until 2021, though.
I grew up in rural, fundamentalist Christendom, and I didn’t even learn the word “trans” until 2002 or 2003. I watched a landslide of TV documentaries about it a few years later, mostly via YouTube, and stayed up until dawn one night doing so. But I couldn’t understand why.
What I knew was one simple thing: I spent almost my entire childhood thinking, I wish I’d been born a boy.
I knew better than to say it out loud. Neither friends, family, nor church would have accepted such a statement. So I said nothing.
I was well aware of being a tomboy. I stayed outside riding my bike as much as possible, and I hiked in the local woods alone. I got a good tan every summer. I played volleyball and was good at it. I taught myself how to swim properly. But girls did those things, too, so that told me nothing.
In seventh through tenth grades, I only wore jeans. No skirts or dresses except at church, where I felt awkward. Then when I was sixteen, my mom had a meltdown about my heavy metal t-shirts and ripped jeans and remade my wardrobe without my input. I came home one afternoon and found new clothes on my bed.
The worst fight Mom and I ever had, though, was about bras. She wanted me to start wearing training bras in fourth grade. I fought with her for two years, refusing to wear bras and nearly getting my ass beaten for it. Finally, in sixth grade, I gave up and wore the damn bras. I was already a size 36B when I was eleven. Two different boys sexually assaulted me on the school bus, grabbing my “big” breasts in sixth grade, and I wore shirts sized like tents as a result for almost thirty years. I already hated my breasts, and that just made me hate them even more. I spent decades cursing the fact I’d been born with a female body.
Aside from the sexual assaults, the worst part was Mom explaining puberty to me when I was ten. The horror of it nearly gave me a nervous breakdown. I thought, That will ruin my life!
Then, when it happened during the summer before sixth grade, I thought, I don’t know if I can live with this. It’s awful.
But I had no way to contextualize all my feelings. I assumed I was being a whiny pre-teen who was simply “too hormonal.” And weren’t all teenagers depressed? People said teenage depression was common. I assumed I was normal.
I noticed over the years that I only felt comfortable wearing jeans, boots, and unisex shirts. Even after watching TV documentaries about trans children, such as I Am Jazz, I still didn’t put it all together.
Then, at the age of 43, my life changed forever. I started reading articles by trans people, and somewhere in the morass of memoirs, I read the right account. Then I understood what was happening: I am trans.
I remember sorting all the clothes in my closet. A whole series of firsts soon followed. Round one: wear my most masculine-looking women’s clothes and send the rest to Goodwill. Round two: buy men’s clothes. Round three: buy men’s shoes. Round four: buy men’s underwear.
Month by month, my closet and wardrobe transformed.
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