All of this is amazing.
When I was growing up, the terms transgender and transsexual werent part of anyones vocabulary.
From a very young age, I instinctively knew I wasnt like other kids.
Growing up, my life was no different.
From a very young age, I instinctively knew I wasnt like other kids.
And so I grew up.
I became a manly man, at least by appearance.
My sexuality developed in a normal way: I liked girls.
I loved how they looked, dressed, smelled, acted.
Deep inside, I also envied them.
Not only did I want to be with women, I wanted to be like them, too.
Before this, my most easily felt emotions were anger, hostility, frustration, and fear.
I had never really learned how to love myself.
By being responsible for and taking care of my wife and children, I was suddenly valuable.
Not only did I want to be with women, I wanted to be like them, too.
No longer was I living in survival mode as I had when I was growing up.
I was happy and felt a real sense of security.
I took her lack of disgust as full acceptance and shared some of my deeper thoughts and desires.
Eventually, my wife pushed me to explore the feelings, and so I did.
My first cross-dressing experience was at a local transgender support group.
There was no sexual component to the experience, but therewasa sense of truth, of somehow beingright.
My spirit needed something more.
During this time, I found myself struggling more and more by the day to suppress my true self.
By denying my nature and suppressing my real self, I was denying who I was.
What was left was simply a shell, an automaton.
Then one night while I was in my typical silent-internal-struggle mode, my wife asked what was wrong.
But for the first time in my life, I was fully honest with her and with myself.
I told her it wasnt so much what I wanted but where I was feeling driven to go.
It was the first time I faced that fact that I was indeed a transsexual.
The hardest and most difficult part of my coming out was with my daughters.
But my children were another matter entirely.
The discussion didnt last long.
My relationship with them changed, and for many years, our level of closeness wasnt the same.
A sort of gulf had opened between us.
I didnt see this as some kind of end goal for becoming a woman I already was a woman.
This was simply one more step in life.
Today, Im 60 years old.
But I have come to learn just how little I need to live on to be happy.
Over the years, Ive been asked many times if Im happy having transitioned.
It brought me a greater measure of peace.
It made me more aware of what others face after experiencing bias, ignorance, and discrimination myself.
Ive come to accept myself as I am, to no longer worry about how the world sees me.
Im much less vain but far more self-assured.
Im more comfortable in my own skin.
Photo courtesy of the author
