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Recently for me, there seems to be new ways of looking at things, from a very much different place than was previously the case. After reading Karen Paynes recent entry "Haloween" where she looked back a year or so ago, it sparked my thoughts about the past, dressing and early transition. I thought about those who, like I did, like to wear female clothes around the house, wearing skirts and dresses, or leggings and tops, with outrageously high heeled shoes. This was part of my earliest practical phases of transition. And today without thinking about it too much, I just seemed to automatically visualise young kids dressing up in mommy's clothes and shoes, as small children often do, especially small girls. So what? Well it seems to me that I was doing the same exact thing a while back (maybe not with my mothers stuff though!), looking back from my present vantage point I can see that I was practising for what was to come in my life, it was part of growing up as a transwoman. Now, at the start of my escaping "the closet" 4 years ago, I had realised that I had to go through female puberty, and as such I had thought only in terms of physical changes and social changes and challenges. I can now see that the early private dressing in the "closet" was pre-puberty. I have always and honestly stated that I didn't feel as if I was "born in the wrong body", but that only when I look back I can see that there were signs that I was "not right" as a male, and whether or not it's the hormonal changes that I am going through, I am unsure, but it amazes me how much of my past that I can now see, and especially the sense I can now make of my past. I did used to get vague feelings as a male of what it might be to be female, but they'd soon disappear and I just thought of it being idle curiosity, and my "closet" cross dressing as a fetish. On the other hand, perhaps my past problem was to ignore vague feelings that I didn't have some form of proof for, is this called a lack of self-belief? Whatever, I'm now happy to be on my voyage of joyful discovery............ Cheers, Eve

I use to find halloween a sanctum for no-bars outings before gender reassignment surgery. Would dress up, go to work then out to parties or bars and be extremely happy in that nobody would bother me, a male dressed as a female. My first time in Oregon, I dressed in a just above the knee skirt, white blouse and high heel pumps that I would call very business-like where many employees did not recognize me. Heck even one hit on me. This halloween will be my first as a female and the year before it was during my real life test. What I am doing this year? For the first time in 15 years giving out candy to neighborhood children early evening and then off to a local bar to meet up with a female friend. In one respect drab, no exhilarating push of adrenaline coursing through my veins for the sheer thrill of dressing as a female but instead perhaps my costume might be enough, a twenties flapper. For those who have not gone under the GRS knife and plan on going out, best wishes to you!!!

My first relationship was with a girl. At the time, I told myself that it was alright to be with a girl; in fact, I was supposed to be with a girl, because inside I wasn't a girl. I never told her that, though. During my teenage years, I convinced myself it would be okay if everyone thought I was a lesbian. It was preferable to the truth. I looked female and, if I was with a female, I could play the more masculine role in the relationship. And I did. It was only years later that I realised that I had been using women in that fashion. Guilty secret. My first relationship with a man happened when I was nineteen and at university. I never told him I had been with women. He had long blond hair and he had a slim build. He was quite feminine-looking, although I didn't think, at the time, that had an influence on me. But maybe it did. I was also attracted to a woman named Pippa at university. She was the girlfriend of one of Mike’s friends. A year into the relationship with Mike, I discovered they had been secretly seeing each other. I split with Mike. Pippa found out that I knew and she ended her relationships with both men. And then we got together. But it didn't last long. Eventually I returned to Mike, after seeing a few people in between. I told some of those people that I was bisexual and invariably that caused problems. Issues that made me regret disclosing that aspect of me, too. I was still with Mike when I met my husband. Looking back, I can see that none of my relationships were especially healthy. I was never very good at them. And I can blame all kinds of things for that but I know it’s me. My opinion of my own body gets in the way. I can playact at things for a while and then it gets too much to bear and I stop pretending. That means the other person in the relationship stops getting the things they need from me. And for a lot of people that’s a rejection and invalidation. It’s funny that I know I need my own validation but I'm very good at dishing out invalidation to others. That’s wrong and I understand that now. And I also know now that I could never have received the validation I needed because my persona is based on lies and deception, because I've never really been straight with anyone. Sometimes I wonder whether my attraction to women is real. Sometimes I wonder if I've constructed it to give myself opportunities to act out my male-role fantasies. Sometimes I wonder, because I've always been attracted to the male form even though I threw myself into relationships with women first. And sometimes I think about something else that scares me. If I think about the possibility (an extremely remote one, I know) of undergoing gender reassignment surgery, and if I ever received the male body that I always wanted, I would still be attracted to men, first and foremost. And what gay man would ever want me, when there’s a whole bunch of attractive, real gay men out there that they could have instead? I would still be a freak. I'm always going to be a freak, no matter what my body looks like.

I believe the female puberty thing gets many of us and we learn as time passes by, I will admit I went through it and now look back and see it as part of my growth. Happy to hear your are on a joyful discovery now.

In regards to GRS and relationships concerning real gay men, I believe you are on the right track with your thoughts. One time I was in a situation where intercourse was an option where there were two gay men and myself post-op and one of them made advances at me to enter me, not my vagina but my backdoor which first and foremost I am against, just not my thing. The point is sexual-wise I could be with a gay man if I submitted but zero, nothing in regards to relationship as in this situation it was all about the sex, no connection. I know and experienced friendship with gay men but nothing there relationship wise. I would guess the same would be possibly be true with your situation also but than again one never knows. Any ways I cherish my gay friends no different than my non gay friends. In regards to you being a freak, I don't think so but instead have less options (no different than me) for relationships. Sex is easy to come by but true and meaningful relationships are few and far between for us.

After my mother died, I spent a few months feeling guilty and a few months thinking about myself - perfectly selfishly, I realise. I needed to get my head around a few things. At work, the company started to make a big thing of diversity. The law was changing; gay marriage was grabbing all the headlines because it looked as though it was going to be legalised in the UK. Trans issues were also hitting the headlines. A few high profile sportsmen had come out as gay. The whole LGBT+ thing was out in the open, on the television, in the newspapers - and at work. In 2013 I joined the company LGBT network. I didn't tell anyone, but those who were also members of the network could see that I had joined. I started to get involved on the network discussion board. So, effectively, I came out to other members of the network. Initially, I just hinted that I was bisexual. I involved myself in discussions about that topic. Later, I admitted that I had an interest in the “T” as well as the “B”. Eventually, I openly discussed being transgender as well as bisexual, within the confines of the network’s private discussion board. One day, I accidentally let something slip to a member of the team I work for, via something I said in an email. Panicking, and worried in case he said anything to the rest of the team, I immediately sent him another email, saying something along the lines of, “I think I just outed myself. How good are you at keeping secrets?” He responded by sending me a photo of him and his boyfriend. We had a short discussion and he told me that our manager was perfectly fine with him, when he’d come out. So before the end of the day, I came out to my manager. It took quite a while before I had the courage to come out to the rest of the team, but I did. And there wasn't one negative response. In fact, two were extremely positive. One guy told me that my revelation to him had inspired him. So much so, that while he usually ensures his nail polish is removed before turning up for work Monday mornings, that weekend he made the decision to leave it on, and the following Monday he arrived at work sporting sparkly blue nails. The man I had been most worried about telling sent me an email, simply saying, “High five!” and then he followed it up with another email saying, “That must have felt like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and then discovering you could fly. I'm so pleased for you.” Not one negative comment. Not one rejection. Plenty of support. I can’t explain how that made me feel. Contrast that with another time that I plucked up the courage to tell someone at work that I was bisexual. This was back in 2002. My husband and I had split up for a while and I had begun chatting with strangers online, partly because I was bored and miserable, partly for other reasons. Through the online chats I got to know someone called Sam that, initially, I thought was male but turned out to be female. She asked me out and I said yes. Back at work, a day or two later, at lunchtime, a colleague asked me what I had planned for the weekend. I thought about what I should say and then decided on the truth. I told her I was going out to meet a woman for drinks. She didn't say anything, so I asked, “Did you hear me?” to which she replied, “Yes, I heard. Do you mean like a date?” I nodded. She stood and walked away and she avoided contact with me after that. I don’t believe we have ever spoken since. I know she saw me as a woman (obviously) and therefore was probably shocked that I was meeting a woman. But that made me keep my mouth shut for another eleven years.

It wasn’t until I was seven years old that I had it pointed out to me that I was different. Prior to that, I had never considered myself to be anything other than a happy child who played with all the boys who were my friends, and I enjoyed life. I hadn’t ever consciously thought there was anything odd about the fact that all my friends were boys, just as I hadn’t ever consciously thought that I didn’t behave like a typical girl. Looking back, I know now that it could have seemed odd to others but it never occurred to me that anything was amiss. I didn’t play with dolls and tea sets, even though my parents had given me plenty. I spent my days playing in the mud with the boys, climbing trees and making dens and I used their toys; the cars and fire engines and toy swords and guns that boys were given to play with. And I was perfectly happy with that until I was seven, when the mother of one of my friends pulled me away from the game we were all playing and she took me home, where she handed me over to my own mother and said she thought there was something wrong with it. I overheard the whole conversation even though I don’t believe they thought I could hear it. Or maybe they didn’t consider that I would understand what they were saying. But I did. My friend’s mother told my mother that it was wrong that I played with the boys. My mother defended me at the time - I remember so clearly - by saying I was “just a tomboy” and that there was nothing wrong with that. She said I was too young to know any better and I would grow out of it. And she told my friend’s mother to mind her own business. Their voices became raised and I recall feeling guilty because I had caused the argument. I wasn’t allowed to play at that boy’s house again. When it dawned on me that someone had thought my behaviour was wrong, and that I had been punished for it by losing a friend - my playmate - I began to change. I didn’t go in the opposite direction; I didn’t suddenly start playing with the girls’ toys, or take up any girly hobbies. Instead, I just stopped playing with my friends. I became introverted, although I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t realise that until years later. Instead of playing, I used to read. I kept myself to myself. I kept my thoughts to myself. Realising that I missed the boys made me realise I missed what we’d had; that camaraderie that we had shared, the comfort of being with people like me - because I had thought they were like me and I was like them. That was when I first began to really consider that boys and girls were different and that we had our roles to play and that I wasn’t fitting at all well with the “girl” role I had been given. The role that was expected of me, I realised. I remember thinking how unfair it was. At ten years old, I hit puberty. I can’t possibly put down in writing how disgusted it made me feel. There was so much wrong with it. I found the whole thing gruesome and it made me feel dirty and I didn’t want it. As my body began to change I began to hate everything about it and I began to hate myself. That hatred of my own body has never gone away. I don’t like to have my photograph taken. I don’t like to be filmed. I don’t like to look at myself in the mirror. And, as my partners over the years can attest, I have never liked other people seeing my body or touching my body. At school, my friends were still male. The people I talked to, connected with, were male. That was the case until the age of eleven when I changed schools. My secondary school was an all-female affair. And I didn’t connect with anyone for a year or more. My teachers thought I was shy and quiet. School reports regularly had something written on them, by one teacher or another, suggesting that I needed to make friends and “come out of my shell”. I preferred not to be noticed. I kept my head down. I was never bullied at school. But I did eventually make friends with a girl who was being bullied. For some reason, I had felt it was my responsibility to step in, one day, and stop an act of bullying that I witnessed. I had felt the need to protect her from her tormentors. It was uncharacteristic behaviour for me, because it got me noticed. But it also got me interacting with females for the first time. Eventually there were three of us who always hung around together. Paula had most definitely gone through puberty in a major way. She had the body of a woman at the age of twelve, and she knew it and flaunted it. Voluptuous is the word I’d use to describe her. Huge boobs that most of the girls were envious of. Especially Debra, the third member of our little group. Debra was lithe and flat chested. I was somewhere in between the two, although I envied Debra’s body, not Paula’s. But while I wanted Debra’s body for myself, insofar as I wanted my own carbon copy of it, I appreciated Paula’s. I was attracted to Paula’s. Paula was my first crush. While, by this time I obviously wasn’t unaware of the fact that I was “female”, in our little group of three I was the closest thing there was to the alpha male. Both Paula and Debra deferred to me in the decision-making department - always - and I was in charge. Whether they knew it or not, they both managed to reinforce my feelings of being male and my desire to be male in body as well as spirit and mind. And that, if I’m honest, is the main reason I hung around with them. It wasn’t for their girly chats or their feminine pursuits. And that is an awful thing to admit, because it means I was using them. And it wouldn’t be the last time I used females to make me feel better about myself. That realisation, when it occurred to me, filled me with guilt for many years, because even though on some level I knew I was doing it, I never stopped myself from doing it. I feigned interest in their feminine activities, even though those activities bored me rigid, because it allowed me to remain a part of the group. I fancied Paula. There was no two ways about it. That was another reason I hung around with the two girls. And one evening, I plucked up the courage to tell her. Debra was missing that night. She was sick, if I recall correctly, and so it was just Paula and I. And while I was scared of what I was about to do - coming out for the first time - the guilt was eating at me and I had a compulsion to explain myself to someone I thought I trusted. So I told her. I told her I was attracted to her, and when her face betrayed her thoughts - confusion and then revulsion - I jumped in to explain further. I said it was alright because I wasn’t a girl. And I went on to explain what I meant by that. Paula walked away. And I didn’t go after her. Looking back, I can see now how much that rejection affected me. The knowledge that she found me revolting, after I’d told her what I was and how I felt, coupled with the fact that, back at school the next day, she immediately told anyone she could find to listen, made me take the decision not to share like that ever again. I also know now that it reinforced the feeling I’d had since the age of seven, that there was something wrong with me; that I was defective. I felt bad about losing friends again - because I did lose them - and I felt bad that the cause of it was me and the way I was. The way I am. And the fact that I’d opened my mouth. I should never have opened my mouth. I went back to being a loner. I withdrew to my bedroom every evening after school and I decided I didn’t need friends. It was too much hard work trying to cultivate friendships, especially when I was defective. Everyone could obviously see those defects so the best thing to do was to hide them. Initially I hid them by hiding myself away and not interacting with people, above the bare minimum required of me. Later, I would hide them by denying them. By the age of fourteen, my mother was sick of me hiding away in my room and not acting like a normal teenager. Whatever a normal teenager is supposed to act like, I obviously wasn’t doing it, according to her. She dragged me to see a doctor. The pair of them discussed me as if I wasn’t there and I tried to pretend I was ignoring the conversation. I wasn’t, though. I heard it and I was getting annoyed by what they were saying because they didn’t have a clue. Eventually the doctor turned to me and asked me what was wrong. Frustrated by all the ridiculous conclusions they had drawn - one of which was that I was struggling at school (not true; my grades were good), another was that I was having “boyfriend trouble” (not true; I hadn’t even looked at a boy in that way at that age) - I told them what was wrong with me. My second disastrous attempt at coming out. My mother said I was too young to know what I was saying. She said I was talking rubbish. She got very angry and upset. The doctor backed up my mother. He said that I was just confused and that I could put that confusion down to puberty. My body was changing; the hormones were very active. It was normal to be anxious and confused but things would settle down in a year or two. In the meantime, take this prescription. That will sort you out. I later found out the medication was to treat anxiety and depression. Two attempts at explaining, to someone I trusted, what was going on with me and how I felt. Two rejections. Two reinforcements that I was most definitely broken. I wouldn't try it again for many years.

I’m not gay. Someone once asked me if I was, having spied the rainbow-coloured bangle that I kept hidden under the sleeve of my shirt. I laughed nervously, shoved the bangle back up my arm and replied, “If only it was so simple.” That’s not to say that being gay is simple. It’s just that, sometimes I think that being gay would be simpler for me. I am attracted to women and men. I am attracted to people. I fall in love with people. I used to think of myself as pansexual, until I read a definition of that term which made me wonder if that was what I really was. I don’t like men and women equally. I prefer men to women - physically speaking. I’m attracted to both, but I’m more attracted to men. Emotionally speaking, I’m attracted to all areas of the gender spectrum. I can fall in love with men and women, and people who land somewhere in between. How do I know this? Because I have. The physical attraction to the gender spectrum definitely leans towards the male form. But that hasn’t always been the case with me. When I was younger, much younger, I was almost exclusively physically attracted to the female form. Or, at least, I told myself that. Over the years, that has changed. Today, far more often than not, it’s the male form that catches my eye. So what does that mean for my sexuality? It’s often easier to refer to myself as bisexual even though I don’t believe that term really applies to me. People seem to “get” bisexuality a lot easier than other terms such as panromantic or pansexual or poly-something-or-other, or all the other terms that people use to try to define themselves and each other. Although, a lot of people don’t “get” bisexuality either. So when it comes down to it, I’d rather not label my sexuality. But what I do now label is my gender identity. I am transgender. And I always have been, even if I denied it to others and to myself. I’m not gender-fluid. I’m not non-binary. I know what I am; what I have always been, even though for too many years I pretended it wasn’t the case. My body is female but the rest is not. And it’s not the case that sometimes I feel female and sometimes I feel male. It’s not the case that sometimes I feel like I don’t fit into either sex. I know what sex I’d rather be. What sex I should have been. I have never felt female. But I was given a female body.

My feminine traits. They’re non-existent. Not that I haven’t tried. Over the years, I’ve attempted to be feminine, mostly for the benefit of my mother. After the trip to the doctor, where he suggested my mother should actively encourage female activities, take me out shopping for dresses, do stuff that mothers and daughters are supposed to do, that’s what she did. I went along with my mother’s wishes for a while, although it was plain to both of us that I wasn’t enjoying any of it. She kept it up for a few months and then gave up. Several times, I tried to explain to her that it just wasn’t me. That it wasn’t what I needed, because that wasn’t how I was built. But each time I tried to talk to her on the subject, she would get upset and tell me to shut up. For ten years, I made random attempts to talk to my mother about being transgender. She didn’t want to know. One time, she said to me that she already had a son and she didn’t want another one. It was only years later that I realised what I’d denied her. I had denied her the pleasure of having a daughter to teach how to cook, a daughter to teach how to apply makeup, a daughter to go shopping with. All the things that, I suppose, a mother looks forward to doing with her daughter, she never got to do with me. I still have guilt over that. I have, on occasion, made an effort - mainly for my mother but also for others - to be female. I also tried to be feminine for my husband, although not all the time, I admit. I couldn’t possibly do it all the time. It’s very draining to pretend to be something you’re not. It’s tiring to pretend to be enjoying something when you’re not enjoying it at all. One of the occasions I made the effort was my wedding day. I wore a dress. Not quite white, but ivory coloured. We didn’t want any photos of the wedding (my idea, I believe) but one of my husband’s friends took a bunch of photos anyway and then presented us with an album full of them. I look like the fairy that belongs on top of the Christmas tree. I hate having my photo taken at the best of times. But in a dress? That’s the worst. But I allowed it to happen again, at my brother’s wedding. I wore a lacy purple dress, mainly because I knew it was expected of me, and mainly to please my mother. I looked - and felt - horrendous. My mother didn’t even say anything about it afterwards. I was disappointed about that because I’d done it for her, not me. The last time I wore a dress was two years ago, at another wedding. The wedding of my cousin. Again, I did it because I knew it was expected, and because it was still a way for me to cover up what I am. There was a lot of family at that wedding. They don’t know about me, unless my mother shared with her sister at any point over the years. But I doubt she did. If she had, I’m pretty sure I’d have received funny looks or questions over the years, and I haven’t. So, occasionally I’ve worn a dress, to keep up appearances. And every time, I’ve felt like a freak. Uncomfortable and wrong. Deceitful and fraudulent. A few years ago, my husband and I were really struggling. To be honest, the marriage had become staid because we were taking each other for granted far too much. We had become complacent and uncaring. We somehow agreed to try to enliven things in the bedroom, which resulted in the both of us buying ridiculous amounts of lingerie for me to wear. I tried it. I really tried, for a month or two. But it didn’t fix any problems, and I felt guilty for trying to cover up the cracks in a way that I’d always known wouldn’t work. I don’t feel sexy in lingerie. I never have. I also felt guilty for letting down my husband like that. For pretending I was into it when I wasn’t. When I knew I wasn’t, and never would be. For basically lying to him, leading him on, faking it. I’m not feminine. I never have been. I’ve tried, when I have thought it was required of me or expected of me. I’ve faked, I’ve cheated, I’ve pretended, I’ve lied. I hate myself for doing it because I know it’s wrong. And because it has badly hurt my husband. And because it hurts me. It hurts me because it compounds the guilt I’m already feeling. It hurts me because I’m denying what I am, over and over again. I’ve spent most of my life pretending to be something I’m not, and I’m exhausted by it. The guilt and the shame eats at me. It keeps me awake at night.

The manner of my mother’s death was one that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It was hard to watch her go and it was a terrible, evil disease that took her. Her death changed me. My husband noticed almost immediately that I had changed, but he didn't know the reason why I changed. He probably thought I was devastated. I was devastated at first, but that wasn't the whole story. The reality is I felt relief after she had gone. And then I felt incredibly guilty for feeling relieved. The relief wasn't just that her suffering had ended. Of course I didn't want her to suffer. But the real relief was that the person who I had been trying to gain acceptance from, for all those years, no longer needed me to conform to her image of what I should be. My mother was a nineteen-fifties wife. That’s not to say she was a wife in the fifties, just that she modelled herself on that kind of wife. She stayed at home, took care of the kids and the house, cooked the meals, did the cleaning, washing, all of that. From my perspective, she never really had a life of her own. She never had outside interests that I saw. She sacrificed herself to the “housewife” life and allowed her husband to go out and earn the money. She was caring and attentive when I was a child, and she liked nothing better than to spoil her kids and her husband at Christmas and on birthdays. She always overspent at Christmas and the sheer number of gifts she purchased for me and my brother was overwhelming and embarrassing. We weren't rich. But she controlled the money that my dad earned (he allowed her to do that so he didn't have to worry about anything except his trip to the pub on a Friday night) and she managed to save enough every year to spend a fortune on our presents. She liked shopping - a lot. I hated (and still hate) shopping. She loved cooking. I don’t like cooking and I'm a hopeless cook. She would have loved for me to follow in her footsteps. But at fourteen I spoiled that for her. And, apart from the times I tried to talk to her about it - and almost always failed - she never wanted to discuss it again. But my mother was very good at conveying her thoughts and opinions with just a look. I received enough disapproving stares to last more than a lifetime. And while she never said anything openly, within earshot of others - about the fact that I didn't invite her to come with me to buy my wedding dress, about the fact that I didn't want children, about her dislike of the first boyfriend I took home to meet her, about a myriad other things - she said things to me in private and she threw the dirty looks my way often enough that I felt plenty of guilt at going against her wishes. And I regularly found myself trying to make it up to her, or defending her when others didn't agree with her - which was often. She was stubborn and opinionated. And so am I. I seem to have inherited those traits. She was also old fashioned in her views and closed-minded. But on the surface, she loved me. She adored my brother, and equally adored my nephew; my brother’s son. Of course, she was never going to receive any grandchildren from me. My father was more distant when we were kids. My father was out of the house a lot because he worked long hours - he left for work early and came home late. He allowed himself one or two evenings each week to visit the pub with his friends and handed the rest of his earnings over to my mother to manage. When he wasn't at the pub, he sat in front of the television until he fell asleep. The only occasions I remember spending quality time with my dad were spent watching football and science fiction on television. The only connection I really made with my father was through the shared love of football. We support different teams but I believe he appreciated (and still appreciates) that I can hold my own in a real discussion about football. My brother isn't really interested in football. My father is kind of lost without my mother. Ironically, I appear to have found myself again. Now that my mother’s no longer around, the only things I can talk to my dad about are her or football. And that’s sad. So yes, I have changed. It has caused a lot of friction between me and my husband over the last couple of years, unfortunately. I wish it hadn't, but it is what it is.

Thank you for your comments, Karen. I have been told many times not to think of myself as a freak - and I must stop doing it - so I will take on board what you say about just having fewer options when it comes to relationships. I need to start thinking more positively. Thanks for reading.

I have wanted to write this down for a while. But it never seemed to be the right time. I always found an excuse not to. Whether I was too busy writing other stuff (fiction, mostly), whether I was playing my music, whether I was busy working or doing general activities that constituted trying to live life, or whether I was too scared to analyse myself too deeply, I've always managed to find reasons not to find the time and the space to do this. But a couple of things have driven me to introspection recently. Firstly, I'm apparently splitting up with my long-standing partner and I'm trying to find the time to find somewhere else to live, whilst feeling guilty about all of it. Secondly, I have been asked to speak, at work, about my experiences and thoughts revolving around coming out. These things have led me to a place where I've done an awful lot of thinking lately. Thinking and contemplating and reflecting. Analysing myself, my attitudes, my behaviours, my life and my experiences. And I decided that maybe it was the right time to try to write this down.