Am I Transgender | Part 1: Soul Searching

Am I Transgender | Series Introduction
 

In the years leading up to my personal acceptance of being trans, I asked myself countless questions and spent many hours in dusty depths of my childhood memories. In other words, “soul searching”. What I was looking for were memories that could potentially align with the idea that maybe I had known I was transgender all along but was too uneducated and unaware to make a connection. My hope was that by looking back, I could find proof of my conscious dismissal of being a female. What I found…will likely NOT shock you.

 

In my early childhood (5-7 years old), I remember both enjoying the company of girls and having the occasional attraction to them. I didn’t want to play with them because I may have found them cute, but because I was jealous. I wanted to be like them and accepted by them. I looked up to my female cousin a lot as well as my sister. There was no way for me to understand this back then, but there was a deep sense of admiration for females that I wanted for myself.

 

As a child, probably around 8-10 years old, I found myself drawn to my mother’s collection of lipstick as well as her dresses and the sweet scent of perfume. I believe there was a desire to explore that world – and I did for a time, secretly – but all with the awareness that there was no way I could ever fully embrace “girly” things because of how I was born.

 

Around the same time, my parents had begun their long separation leading up to their eventual divorce. I should also note that I come from a Christian family who went to church weekly. Whenever he was around I knew he was proud of me whenever I participated in bouts of skill or strength such as playing touch football on the streets or have wrestling matches inside with the other guys. However, in my mind, like a tomboy, all I wanted to do was show that I could scrap with guys older than me despite having zero desire to revel in masculinity.

 

I didn’t care to be them, I just wanted to beat them. This could be why I came to love fighting games so young. Gender was irrelevant. Only skill mattered.

 

As a teen, I found solace in text-based role-play when chat rooms were a thing. I tried creating male characters that I could identify with, but all of them felt strained and quickly were killed off due to both a lack of experience and emotional resonance. I just couldn’t get into any of them and I had made them. Then, I created a female vampiric thief who had both wit, beauty, and confidence. She encountered many foes, made friends, and gave me an epiphany I’ll never forget.

“This feels right…” I whispered to myself.

I always embodied female or queer/androgynous characters from then on.

 

Much of my time in high school was spent associating with the females in my life. I would make a point to hang out with as many of them outside of school as possible. Yes, I had other male friends, but most of the guys I knew had a job, a girlfriend, and had either fallen into cliques and/or had become complete assholes. My inability to connect with nearly all but a select few makes the point of me having guy friends moot. The females whose houses I visited for fun and spoke to in school allowed me to learn more about them without appearing odd or homosexual…though they probably thought I was anyway.

Currently, though I’m pansexual, I happily play the lesbian card without a second thought if I need to make a guy disappear. I’m honestly so gay for females moreso than not. Ironic that all of my romantic encounters since beginning my transition have been with biological males.

Once I quit forum role-play upon feeling the pressure of campus life and higher education, I had no way of expressing my truest identity. The reality of “being a man” hit me again. Repeatedly. With every female I met. The first time being when my voice suddenly dropped during high school. Eventually, I faced the girl who I had locked away for so many years, yet who had the luxury of learning within her cage. She was always there and I spent my latter teens and twenties giving her a chance to speak her mind and tell me things she had learned. Much of her early existence and the first years of my transition was chronicled in my memoir blog, Meganekko Memoirs.

 

What I discovered in my dusty alcove of memories were a number of signs that helped me begin the process of accepting that I could possibly be transgender:
 

1) From a very young age, makeup and feminine clothing was appealing to me.

2) From a very young age, I “wanted to be the little girl” and hang out with them just to experience a little of their world.

3) I was aware that being anything other than “a man” would be unacceptable in my very religious family and suppressed all related thoughts.

4) Before my teens, I knew I had no desire to be a man, but I also knew I had to adapt accordingly if I ever wanted to attract a mate.

5) During my teens, text-based role-play became my outlet for the suppressed emotions and thoughts that came from keeping my true self locked in a cage.

6) I continued to spend as much time with females as I could throughout my high school career. Very rarely was this for romantic motives.

7) The pressures that came with being a visibly male college student quickly began to cut deep into my psyche, causing all the suppressed feelings and doubts of my childhood to leak out. I had no choice but to face those years of dense thoughts in the form of a caged girl.

 

Part 2 will focus on aspects of separation and deep denial that I experienced in the midst of doing everything I could to simply live. However, what do you do when you realize you haven’t really been living at all…?

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Do you relate to these sort of memories? Do you know someone who is currently questioning? Be sure to leave a Comment so I can respond!
 
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Thank you very much for reading. Until next!