This week I have finally started to become emotionally okay with being Transgender.  Intellectually I knew it months ago, but internally I have been fighting it whether I meant to or not. Being transgender was great for other people, but just a headache and not okay for me. It messes up too may areas in my life.Thanks to the support and encouragement from many of the people I have met online I am starting to look at it differently and without quite so much of the panic and feelings of being sucked under by a current out of my control.

There is a set of "would you rather" questions I have seen trans Youtubers ask when talking about being trans and one of them is; if you were stranded on an Island for the rest of your life with no chance of rescue and there were male and female clothes in front of you which would you choose to wear - even though no one will see how will you present? for me the obvious and practical answer is both - over time you would wear all the clothes depending on what wore out, how cold it got and what you were doing...my brain is a weird and wonderful place and with both children being classified with ASD I do wonder if I am undiagnosed sometimes.

But I have recently lived through that same question in a different context.

My kids have gone away for the week with their mum and I have dressed a couple of times while relaxing around the house. I woke up the other day and looked at the two piles of clothes at the end of my bed - one male and one female, and I asked myself who would I rather be? I am not going anywhere, no one will see me - if I am 100% honest which clothes would I rather get up on put on? Do I want to be male or female?

I chose the female leggings and tee.

It was an important moment for me though.  I realised that when all is said and done, this is how I see myself. This is not a sexy outfit, but a comfortable one. This is not an overly effeminate dress to go with heels for some imaginary night out where I am a perfect vision of my female self.  This is just me, being me on an average day, and given the absolute freedom to choose I would wear these types of clothes in a heartbeat because they match how I feel.

So with all of the wonderful support and encouragement I have received I effectively woke up finally accepting on an emotional level something that I have intellectually known for a few months, I am transgender - being afraid of accepting it has crippled me, I don't want to be transgender - life is easier as a cis male. Why not just ignore it and hope it goes away?

My life does not have to change, but in order to stay that way I will have to acknowledge that I am lying to myself about who I am, and I will have to accept that I will never wake up and choose those female clothes. As a parent and as a person how can I tell others that they are okay and accepted for who they are if i could not do the same for myself? 

I have to say that I still do not know how far I will take things, I have mentally blocked the bigger idea of transitioning from male to female in order to concentrate on the smaller focus of spring cleaning my life out - removing those masks and getting rid of the parts I really do not need or want in my life any more. As others have said - becoming a more authentic and hopefully more content me.

I had the opportunity to meet up with my younger sisters, who do not know (I am the middle child of 4 sisters and have told the eldest two, but no one else in the family we are a close knit family as there is only 2 years between each sibling and the youngest two are twins) - their partners are very nice but manly men - a professional cyclist and an engineer with a black belt in aikido (could be another martial art but you get the idea) - the twins were an unknown because as adults we are not as close as we used to be although we still keep in touch. We took a walk up a big hill - walking is a common thread in our family, one my older sisters came along and passed a comment about how my face was looking a lot better today (thanks sis!) which made one of the twins ask why, what had happened to my face? so I pretty much had to tell her once the kids were out of earshot, there was going to be no chickening out. 

Both were surprised but after all of the build up in my head and fears it turned out to be a total non event.  The youngest said that as far as she was concerned she wants me to know that she loves me and always will and that she is always available if I need her. We only have one life to live and if being female makes me happy then go for it. The other sister said that she couldnt even begin to understand going through that kind of crisis of identity but to know that she loves me even if we are crap at keeping in touch and that I am not alone, I can always phone her or drop by and not to worry about being DeeDee or male me.

Later once the kids had gone to bed my sisters cracked open a bottle of wine and the youngest asked a few more questions - she is very like my Canadian friend in personality, so she asked when this all started and pointed out that the marriage exploding was very close to the fancy dress party, so I brought up the other things like stealing their clothes since I was 8 and started to talk about playing with their friends when we were younger and being more comfortable in womens company than mens and she pointed out that I grew up with  sisters.  I agreed - a lot of what other people use as atypical activity - playing with dolls, dressing up and playing imaginary games, coreographing dancing, playing cartwheel and handstands, jumping rope, hop scotch were all just normal for me growing up even though I accepted I was a boy.  I pointed out though that other men are brought u in all female households and do not question their gender - as far being trans goes if you sit and question it then you probably are because "normal" people (this is just phrasing and not meant to offend) just don't question the gender they are assigned at birth because they are comfortable in their skin. I have felt emotionally and socially inadequate and not quite right my entire adult life and so I need to take this seriously and explore it so I do not turn into our mum or try to commit suicide because the statistics are genuinely terrifying.

I should point out that none of the above was confrontational, my baby twin sisters are not identical and the eldest, me and the youngest all look alike, I said that accepting me as I was sat dressed as I am is one thing, but if I rocked up in a skirt and wig it would be a different thing altogether, so I pulled up a photo of me in my blond wig and showed them. My sister then said that I looked more like her twin than her twin does lol, so she took my glasses and took a photo of herself (she has straight blond hair) other than the eyebrows and the fact that I am bigger in the face we really do look almost identical - they both found it funny and I was told that I better go to them for fashion advice, it prompted a discussion about dressing inappropriately for the environment and making yourself stand out even more. I said that I will probably just change slightly to begin with, my sister suggested small earrings and I know that now they have seen me as Dee that initial shock will not be a big deal when the time comes. We talked about me moving away from where I am so I can be somewhere more accepting, my baby sister does not want me getting beaten up! (she would easily beat up anyone that started on me on a night out - she has training) and even though I could not stay late I am so grateful for my sisters. They told me not to worry about their respective partners as both are laid back, and both have reinforced the fact that if I need them they are here for me - regardless of geographical location.

Our family has gone through a lot - they were not expecting to hear that their brother has daydreamed about being their sister when I arrived, but they know that this is not a knee jerk reaction, that I am taking it seriously and not rushing and they have offered to support me.  Another massive weight and worry lifted off my shoulders!  I only have my mum left to tell who is going to be very difficult as she has created a big thing around me being the only boy of the family, our relationship is close and has been since my dad died when I was a teen,  but that is also a big part of the reason why I was trying to be the man he was in my eyes and failed miserably. If my mum accepts me then I will be able to face anything else, if she does not then it will be very hard for a while, but at least all of my sisters will stand up for me.  I am sitting in a very good place today emotionally and just wanted to share.