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{A Word to the Wise: the last time I wrote a blog was for a class about the Social Net in which we read Gregory Ulmer and were introduced to his "puncept;" therefore, I apologize in advance for my frequent use of puncepts in my writing. And while we're on that topic, I apologize for my terrible writing, period.} I suppose this is my introduction, and despite my ability to write a mean essay (present thesis excluded), I'm really rather horrible at writing about myself. Anyway, I imagine that my story isn't unlike most of your stories... although I tend to imagine that most of you are much further along your trans* journey (my therapist calls this projection, I believe). The first time I remember thinking I was boy rather than a girl was in kindergarten when all the boys got to be loud and fun and the girls were expected to jumprope or whatever it was that girls were supposed to do. I never did it. But this story really starts a number of years later, when I was 14 (15? the years are blurred thanks to PTSD, but that's another subject all together). I spent a lot of my younger years on dial-up AOL pretending to be a guy: first a straight guy, then a gay guy. For a while there I was extremely obsessed with gay guys, and my "bff" at the time, Ro, was a gay guy (unfortunately he was/is in deep denial about this). He was the first person I came out to. "I want to be a gay guy." (I probably confessed this to him during one of our makeout sessions on my grandfather's golf cart--I was a wild child *insert sarcasm here*.) Being the kind of friend he was (and the kind of mom I had, who thought all my friends were hers as well), he told her my secret. I grew up in an ultraconservative part of South Carolina and my mother, of course, was slightly disturbed at this new information. Give her some credit, it was 2001, and even though I have these fantasies about going back and coming out at a younger age, the truth is, it was a totally different time then. So, she swept me off to a therapist. Depression. Social Anxiety. And the biggie... Borderline Personality Disorder. My life from then on was defined by this diagnosis. I got away with dressing like a guy for a long time because I was goth in high school, which, oddly enough, my mom loved. Things changed when she died in 2006. My mother never knew me as the daughter she always wanted (in fact, she lost 2 daughters: a miscarriage before I was born, and me... the odd, in-between daughter). To cope with her death, I became the person I thought she wanted me to be. Ultra girly. Happy to go shopping, polish my nails, play with babies, or whatever it was that I thought defined the feminine. I still played boy online. It was my only escape. It used to be that you only ever heard of MTF trans*people. In the months after my mother died (I remember this clearly because I was living with my dad) I ordered a copy of "The Big Gay Book of Erotica" or something. The last story was about a transman. What? (I'm imagining Jack Skellington singing "What is This?!") So there it was. I was a FTM. It took me 5 years to accept that. And here I am. And I will leave you with some lyrics from Jack's Lament. Because I can. Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones An emptiness began to grow There's something out there, far from my home A longing that I've never known. And finally... I'm Anndy.