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Roomie's been watching Wandering Son, which is a very wonderful, but heartwrenching, story of transkids. Made me wonder...if I was to write up some memoirs of myself growing up trans, some of the stuff I did, the places I went...would anyone read it?

My last major trans milestone was back in 2000, when I started hormones, so there's not much to tell....

Growing Up Trans: Preschool

I was born on July 26th, 1974. A beautiful bouncy and very hairy little boy. Hairy enought that mom was worried I had the disorder that you see in one of those "See the Wolf Boy!" circus acts. It took a few days, but eventually it all fell out, and then I was just beautiful and bouncy. Well, beautiful in that way that all babies look (I think they all look like Eisenhower or Churchill myself).

My mother had a name for me - Patrick. My father had a different name for me. Supposedly there was a lot of tugging of war over my name, and eventually I didn't become a Patrick, and was given my Dad's suggested name. There was no female name ever discussed - she wanted a boy, and by gum, she was going to get one.

My sister was born when I was three. Our upbringing was pretty standard. Dad brought in the money, Mom raised us at home for a few years. We did have the occasional babysitter, whose name, I think, was Susan. I don't honestly remember her, but mom said that we were inseperable.

In 1979, my father was laid off of work, and did small jobs his Teamster friends could get for him (Through those jobs, he got to meet Willie Nelson, Slim Pickens, and even Jackie Chan before he was famous). We ended up losing our house, and moving in with my grandmother for a short while. And it's here that I remember my first transgender experience.

My grandmother woke up at very very very early hours. Six AM was when she'd get up, and start making homemade pancakes for us. Then noise would wake me up, so I'd watch Saturday morning cartoons (a tradition I kept until well after High School) to pass the time between waking up and breakfast. It was then I watched my first animes.

KMOL showed Battle of the Planets (also known as Gatchaman in Japan) and Star Blazers (also known as Space Cruiser Yamato in Japan). For the next few weeks I followed the advenutres of the G-Force Team and the Argo pretty intensely. But it was Star Blazers that caught my attention as a soap opera for kids. Stories were arced, things changed and remained changed. And then there was Nova.

I didn't click with Derek Wildstar, or the Captain, or Derek's brother whose name I can't remember right now. It was Nova. She was pretty, but had authority. She was feminine, but carried a big gun.

One night, as I was sleeping in my grandmother's living room, I had a dream that I was on the Argo, but as Nova. I remember specifially being on the ship, in her clothing and outfit and voice, and distinctly remember Derek wanting to kiss me. I woke up that morning, and it all seemed perfectly natural to me. Afterwards, anytime I saw her on the show, that was me. And afterwards, pancakes would be ready.

During my formative years, I had on again, off againg relationships with girls. Two of my closest cousins at the time were girls, and I spent a lot of time with them, especially since we lived a short walk away. But they were older than me, and "more mature" (as mature as you can get for 5th grade), and got along with me just fine.
Girls my age, though, were hit and miss. I remember being tickled to torture repeatedly by a girl in my pre-kinder class. She'd make me laugh, then get me in trouble with Mrs. Brodie, and do it again. In first grade, there was Margerite and Margo, both of whom made sure they knew they hated me. Repeatedly and often.

But there were friends I did have, like a Chinese friend (whose name, I also can't remember), who enjoyed hanging out with me, and even invited me over to play dolls with her. There was Brandi, who was into gaming, and so was I, and Ashley, who had the coolest Hermoine-style salt-and-pepper streaked hair ever.

I had boy friends as well, but in general enjoyed my time with girls so much more. One of my male friends was a boy named Richard. Richard had long hair. Just like a girl's. And so began my decades long fight for long hair.

My mother was a hairdresser, so she cut my hair up till I was 22 and moved out of town. I'd see her cutting all her friend's hair, or trimming really long hair, and I'd wanted to look like that, too. Mom was having none of it, though, and kept my hair close cropped and VERY short. When I brought up Richard's hair, her response was that she thought that was bvery innapropriate, and if he was her son, it'd get chopped right off.

But wanting my hair long and styled was a wish that never went away.

Growing up Trans: Preschool to 5th Grade

I began my school career in Pre-Kinder with Mrs. Brodie. I was surrounded on all sides by kids who weren't my family, and I was eager to make new friends. I was an equal opportunity friend maker, making friends with boys and girls. I remember distinctly wanting to be friends with girls, but at that age most wanted nothing to do with me.

There was a girl who lived down the street from me, and we had the same pre-kinder class together. I don't remember her name now (I want to say Sandy, but I don't think that was it), and I really wanted to get to know her as potential playmate. She wanted nothing to do with me. In fact, she went out of her way to get me in trouble with Mrs Brodie.

For a while, it worked. The sweet little angel wasn't guilty of anything, and I was just bursting out laughing and yelling because I was being disruptive. It wasn't until a few weeks later she caught the girl tickling me when I was working then stopping as soon as Mrs. Brodie turned around.

She seperated us, and life went on as normal for a bit. We he had new neighbors who'd moved to the north of us, and they had a girl who was in fifth grade. I made fast friends with her, but very quickly, we lost the house and had to move in with my grandmother for a few weeks, and even made a move to Houston for another couple of weeks.

We eventually found our way back to San Antonio for Kindergarten. Moving temporarily into an apartment until we found better lodgings. Having just lost all of my friends with the house, then the few friends I'd made in Houston, I was itching to find more playmates to be with.

I met a a Chinese girl who lived up the ways from our apartment (I want to say her name was Soo Yi, but I think I'm misremembering). She was my age, and we became good friends. She was very sweet to me, and never excluded me from games she and her girlfriends would play. Even when the other girls told me I couldn't, she'd argue to let me play with them.

I remember pretty vividly her inviting me into her house, where we played with dolls for what felt like hours. I don't remember being as happy as I was just playing dolls with this girl, who let me into her world to play for a few weeks. I didn't know this was out of the ordinary for boys, and it felt perfectly normal to me, but I would soon find out that this was very much the exception to the rule.

At the end of our lease, we made another move, this one more permanent, several miles down the road, but far enough that, again, I'd lost all my friends, and moved to a new school. We stayed here for three years, which at least allowed me some time to make a few good friends (several of which I still have thirty years later), and to finally "integrate" with the people around me. It was then I realized something was wrong.

This time, there were no helpful girls willing to play with me. I couldn't understand why I was being ostracized, and why suddenly I had a bad case of the horrifying communicable plague of elementary school: Cooties. Making friends with boys didn't seem to be a problem (and I played with them often), but I'd always be looking over my shoulder to the girls, and wondering why they didn't want me around. My male friends also seemed to be frightened of the cooties epidemic and stayed very far away from girls.

We got cable in 1982, and I quickly became a fan of "You Can't do That On Television." And it took a quick conversation with my mother to determine what the problem was. Christine McGlade was abot to get slimed, and I noticed, specifically, she was wearing tights under a knee-length skirt. For some reason, I liked that and asked my mom if she'd buy me clothes like hers. She misheard me and said she'd think about it, but that I didn't look good in the colors Allisdair McGillis (who was Christie's partner in comedy in this sketch) was wearing. I corrected her - I wanted clothes like Christine. Matter of factly she said, "You can't wear clothes like that. You're a boy."

That little moment made it into the comics.

And that's when it clicked. Girls and boys were different things. The "something was wrong" feeling was that I was a boy and they were girls. Okay - got it. Now I know why girls don't like me, and why I felt wierd now that they were away. They had cooties, and therefore I wasn't supposed to like them. I began hanging out with the boys, and made some good friends (several have survived right through the transition).

I still wanted that female friendship, though, and occasionally, when I thought the girl was receptive I tried to make friends. Often I found they weren't just disinterested, but outright hostile. I tried to be friends with two girls, Maruerite and Margo, who made my life a living hell afterwards during first grade. There was Kelly and Karen, who were twins. They tolerated me, but made it known I wasn't their friend. Danielle who started out as a friend, which quickly devolved into "You're an icky boy."

There were a few, though - I remember a Kelley (not one of the twins) who let me hang out with her. At this point we were all older - probably third grade or so, so it was less playing with dolls, and more finding things in common to talk about.

By fourth grade, I was doing okay. I was friendly, had lots of guys to pal around with, girls were still on my radar, but slowly drifting away. I'd even joined the Boy Scouts (lasted all of a year).

In 1984, the disaster that had taken our house in 1979 had passed, and we looked for a new house. We moved to a new place that summer, and started the new year in a new school, and new friends. I knew what was wrong with me, and it wasn't wrong at all! This is going to be a great new place!

And that's when everything went sideways.

Growing Up Trans - The Nightmare of 5th Grade

Growing up Trans - Middle School

This segment could be a bit NSFW, cause I'm going to be a bit frank about my life (and its about this time the hormones begin to rage, and everything that accompanies that). I'll try to keep it past the "see more" breaks. Also, since I work for a kid-friendly company who monitors our internet usage, I'm typing this on my phone between calls so I don't ping our sysadmins with potentially embrassing WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION TCP/IP packets. Please forgive any typos - I'm quite literally all thumbs.

We moved to another area of town before I started 5th grade, where I'd end up staying for most of my adolescence. And what an adolescence....

Thing were different this year, than most. Girls seemed finally interested in guys again, which was a boon to me...but...things were different. As we saw in our gender segregated class films, we were all being pumped full of estrogen and testosterone. I coulda told them that way before the film.

I began 5th grade with a terrible terrible event. I was 9. And I needed a shave. Testosterone wasn't kind to me. Or maybe it was awesome to me, depending on your gender identification. It hit me like a ton of bricks, making me my voice incredibly deep, my shoulders incredibly wide, and...well...really helped develop the giblets.

But thats when I realized something was very very wrong. Guys were looking at girls...but in all the "wrong" ways. They saw exactly what puberty made them see, girls who were boiled down to T&A. But what I saw and was feeling was...different. When I looked at a girl, blossoming into puberty, I felt the wrong kind of longing.

( NSFW and a bit TMI beyond this point )

Growing up Trans - Middle School

Growing Up Trans Chapters:
Preschool - http://jenndolari.livejournal.com/2238402.html
Elementary School - http://jenndolari.livejournal.com/2238626.html
The Nightmare of Fifth Grade (NSFW, and a bit TMI) - http://jenndolari.livejournal.com/2238939.html

In Texas, 5th Grade is the end of elementary school. You move onto Middle school for the next three years, and thankfully, several of the girl friends I'd made came with me. I wasn't particularly close to them those, but they very much were friends. It was nice to have them around me in the new environment.

After bolting out of the gate in 5th Grade, I started a whole new era in 6th, by falling flat on my face right out of the bat. From 2nd Grade, I'd been in the a Gifted and Talented program, and I entered 6th Grade with all honors classes and a special gifted and talented class as well. The depression that had started in 5th grade was crippling, and by the end of the year, I was in deep trouble.

The girl in the mirror haunted me for days after she first showed herself. She had no name. She was just there. But being on the other side of the mirror, I couldn't really ever get to her. She was me, but she wasn't. I still didn't quite understand what my problem was - I realized I liked wearing women's clothing, but (other than the one thing I'd mentioned earlier) it wasn't sexual - it just felt so incredibly...right. But I wasn't sure how or why. I didn't have a name or reason for what was happening to me.

The urges and frustrations began to ease a little, thanks to getting used to the testosterone poisoning and dealing with the issue "manually" when the need arose (har har). My relationship with women normalized a little, and I wasn't "confused" as to why I was so anxious around them. Something about being a girl myself when I could made it a little better. There was still a deep hurt when I looked at a woman's body (and the super tight gym uniforms we got didn't help any), but in general, I was beginning to get a grip on the feeling I didn't have a name for yet: Envy.

My depression destroyed my 6th Grade grades, and from 6th grade to the end of my school career, I went to summer school every year till I graduated to keep my grades up. It was at that first year that I came across something that finally gave me a name to what I was going through.

I'm a huge fan of "occult" style books. UFOs, Ghosts, Magic, Paranormal stuff. Big fan. Seeing that I had a whole new library of books for the summer (Summer school was at a completely different school), I decided to run through their paranormal section. I no longer remember the name of the book that pointed me in the right direction, but I would LOVE to find it again. It was something along the lines of "Ghost Stories of Hollywood."

In it was the story of a man who had a haunted makeup drawer (I think, it's been a while). He'd put it up for his wife, and things began to get out of control from there. He started calling himself Jackie, and eventually began crossdressing as this woman, supposedly the one who owned the make up drawer. Eventually it became a full blown possession, and there was a line in there that tugged at my heart. This man was completely done up as "Jacqueline" and his last words to his wife, before subsuming into this Jacqueline persona was "I can't help it." Eventually, the wife gets rid of the make up drawer (smashes, burns and then buries the ashes) and everything goes to normal, Jacqueline being excorcized as it burned.

And buried in that story was one word: "transvestite."

It didn't take long for me to look up that word in a book - A man who derives sexual pleasure from wearing clothing of the opposite sex.

Well. That was me, I thought. I didn't have the sexual part, but what else could it be?

At least I was pointed in the right direction.

7th Grade, the depression didn't lift, but also didn't really get much worse. I'd flunked out of the gifted and talented program, and my "honors" classes were hanging by a thread. My grades were also getting worse. One year, I made an 11. A FREAKING 11. And not just on one paper, that was a six week's score.

Even things I thought would help me ended up making things worse. I took choir that second year - and I was assigned to be a tenor. After my throat began hurting, my teacher had me sing a few notes on the piano, to figure out my range. To my horror, he hit the lowest note on the piano, which I hit perfectly. Choir was supposed to be something feminine, something for my own "Jacqueline." Instead it just reinforced that I was "wrong."

I also wasn't completely immune to the "confusion." I remember becoming really good friends with a friend (again, I don't remember her name, I'm really bad at remembering names), and we became really good and almost close friends. Then one day she dressed to the nines, and it threw me. Suddenly, this owman was an object...and along came that achey hurt feeling of "That is not me."

By then end of the 7th Grade, the girl in the mirror was named Jacqueline.

Another summer school session came and went, and I entered 8th Grade. 8th grade had two momentous occasions. The first was a girl named Kirsten. Kirsten was the first girl who showed an interest in ME as a friend, instead of me trying be friends with other women. She was a wonderful girl, and I actually fell in love with her (she's one of the eleven loves). She had a boyfriend, but that didn't matter to her, and we hung out a lot outside of class (we had the same lunch, and recess periods).

And she was the first woman I didn't feel envious of, or jealous of. She was lovely, yes, but for whatever reason, I felt totally at ease with her. I'd hoped that eventually I could tell her my secret, but that never happened as things soured considerably between us in high school.

The second momentous occasion, was a report on Sri Lanka. Really.

You see, I had a report to write about Sri Lanka for a social studies class. And that meant pouring over pages and pages of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Flipping through the book, looking for information, I ran across "Sexual Behaviour, Human." Being a curious and still-confused thirteen year old, I decided to read about what some people thought was a good time. And listed there was Transsexuality. The desire and need to be a member of the opposite sex.

And there I was.

I'd thought I was a transvestite, but knew the label just didn't quite fit. Here, in two columns of In black and white Times Roman, was me. I was surprised it didn't have my picture in wood engraving as an example.

I had a name for who I was. And this meant there were others.