So... I'm a girl.
I know I've posted lots of wacky shit here over the years. Sometimes out of boredom, sometimes because I'd really like to think I'm funny, and sometimes because I was just in the mood to do so. This isn't one of those wacky moments. This is me, taking a very small step towards doing something I've wanted to do and saying something I've wanted to say to someone, ANYONE, for the longest damn time.
Yep. I'm "coming out." I'm transgendered. "MtF," in popular parlance (figure it out). Gender dysphoric
to the max! "Evil, demon-possessed, deluded homo." Whatever you want to call me. And no, not in the Eddie Izzard "executive transvestite" way. I mean the, "I've known and felt I was female, in some way, for as long as I can remember despite being born in a male body" way. The "lots of early suicides and lots of shattered lives due to not being accepted by friends and family" way. Now, why would a girl like me not want to shout about that from the mountaintops?
I have cringed every time I've been referred to as a "he," or a "him," or an "(insert masculine pronoun here)" over the entirety of my 19 years of "existence." Well, minus the first couple of years. I think it was an accomplishment to simply eat and crap my pants at that point (Does that look like I said I ate my pants when I was very young to you? It does to me.). Regardless, from my earliest memories, I can recall almost intuitively knowing, or somehow inferring from responses I got when engaging in "wrong" behavior, that I would be well-advised to drop it and act another way or face some sort of terrible consequences that I couldn't even imagine (and now, looking back, I don't know what punishment is worse than being locked inside a ****ing miserable, hollow shell of a life and sleepwalking through my days while fearing any social interaction and going into some hyper-alert state of panic during said interactions because I might do something to "give myself away," but the logic of a four year old carried over into real-life application for the following fifteen years isn't exactly amazing).
Funny thing is, I would always end up doing things to trip my plans up and make me ripe for identification. For instance, the 6th grade book fair. I was never well-liked by my classmates at the private school I had only just begun attending, and even though I'd been a good baseball player, my skills apparently didn't equate well to kickball. Every day, I thought I'd prove something to them. Every day, I sucked. I dunno, it was a weird time. Anyways, I had just enough change left over to buy a poster -- but not enough for a book -- at this book fair. I'm not sure what there was, but the only thing I could see myself spending my money on was a poster featuring a cute little polar bear cub. So I bought that one. What the hell compelled me to do this, when I knew full well I was already disliked and picked on? Like I said, I dunno. I made up some incredibly brilliant cover story about it being for my cousin, but it still didn't change the fact that I had to carry around that damn polar bear poster all day and be ridiculed by both boys and girls alike for it.
Okay, I'm rambling, and this is going nowhere. Long story short, I got another shot at another private school in the 10th grade. Quit by November, shortly before an awakening of sorts, due to mysterious reasons like, "it's too far from home" and the ever-incredible, "I just didn't like it." Why did I really quit? I was tormented every day, even though the people there were almost all pretty darn nice, even the ones I had gone to school with before (2nd-5th grades, my halcyon days if I ever had them) and hadn't been in the same circles with at the time. All around me were girls of all types, and I was completely out of place every single day. I didn't want to make out with them like my male classmates presumably did, I wanted to BE them. I wanted to be the somewhat geeky girl with the medium-length blonde hair and the thick glasses who loved Slipknot (okay, taste in music aside). I wanted to be the girl with braces and a very nice body and great, rusty blond-ish hair. I didn't want to be the girl with the pig-laugh as much as I wanted to be one of the aforementioned girls, but I'd have gladly accepted that, too.
For God's sake, how the hell could I have broken through that initial wall in the way of the seemingly unattainable goal of not being miserable? I mean, this is the first time I've ever even been able to TYPE it out, much less say it to someone, and I'm doing this in WordPad, and I'm not sure I'll even get up the nerve to C&P this over to the reply box. It is beyond ****ing torture to know who you are and are NOT and be told by society through years and years of conditioning that you MUST pretend to be the one you're not. It is immeasurably horrible to hide who you really are because you're scared you'll get into some sort of trouble or have things become even worse. But then, it's even worse to realize that YOU HAVE NOTHING EVEN WITH THE FACADE and still remain silent because you're so scared of what could happen to ruin an already ruined life.
I have finally decided to take that step because only now do I truly realize what I've lost and what I will continue to lose by lying to others. I've long since given up on lying to myself, but keeping secrets has never been my favorite thing, even if I'm prone to keep secrets in spite of myself; Come on, I kept the fact that my eyesight was terrible from my parents for six years. It's why I quit baseball in the first place (imagine almost hitting a home run but having it be snagged at the wall by an outfielder and being confused because you're trying to interpret signals from your coaches and teammates to tell you whether you need to round the bases or go back to the dugout). SIX YEARS. That's a pretty minor bit of information in the grand scheme of things, and here I am holding it in as if I were afraid of being labeled a freak like those poor transgendered people or som--oh, right. Damn. How the hell will I ever let
that one out?
Why all the boring backstory? Not sure. It isn't all that illuminating, in retrospect. I actually just chopped out a large chunk of it that did nothing but take up even more space. My hands are shaking, my spelling's shit, I've locked the cats out of this room which contains their food and litter box, and I know I've probably left lots of thoughts hanging despite the length... sorry for the generaly incoherency (hey, cool band name).
Okay, one very ironic aside before continuing. My bed sheets are pink. I originally acquired them on a temporary basis while washing my old light blue ones, but they're much more comfortable and, like I said, I love the irony and the in-joke aspect of the blue comforter on the outside and the pink sheets on the inside.
Anyways, I'm sure I'll regret posting this at some point in the very near future (like... hmm... now). But I've made up my mind after literally thrashing about my bed for long periods of time over the past twenty-four to thirty-six hours, yelling at my ceiling, at God or God know's what, or yelling at nothing in particular about "blue balloons" and "pink ballons" and why they make them and why I and so many others were put in the wrong ****ing pile, and
HOW ****ING CRUEL CAN YOU BE TO KNOWINGLY DO THAT TO SOMEONE?! I had seriously reached a breaking point, and I wasn't sure if those idle thoughts of suicide would remain so idle anymore. So, I came to the conclusion that today is the big day, and hopefully not just on this forum or the internet in general.
Friday the 13th. As always, my timing is beyond impeccable. And even though Dave Chappelle just took a break from dealing with his own shit right now and called me from South Africa to remind me that you can sometimes keep it
too real, I somehow thought the best way to jump into that vast ocean called "OMGWTFBBQ" was to post this somewhat anonymously (but with my intraweb cred at stake -- for a shut-in like me, that's big!) on a very lively SPORTS-driven message board with thousands of members.
I'm sure I'll be treated differently, and probably not in a good way, but oh well. If I never get a rep comment in which I'm referred to as "man" again, it'll be at least a little bit worth it. And I'm sure some people will feel free to tell me I'm evil or sick (and I am sick, in other ways that I suspect are caused by hiding my identity for my entire life -- wanna know why I'm so forgiving with Ricky Williams? Because I am absolutely positive that I've got Social Anxiety Disorder, which has a damn appropriate acronym, and I've been afraid to get it addressed because I was scared of this getting out along with it.) and going to hell or whatever, or if not tell me at least think it. That's fine. I may not ever be able to be a "regular" poster on what I've considered to be a great outlet again, and that's fine, too, even if it'll hurt a little and I'm sure I'll be upset when I feel rejected over this, even if only 1% were doing that and the other 99% said, "I don't profess to know what it's like or even to know much about it, but you go, girl." Yes, the last part was a joke. The "you go, girl," part anyways.
Like I said at the beginning of this novel-length...
thing, I AM A GIRL. A nineteen year old girl with a very weird upbringing that she hated nearly every moment of and issues galore, to be sure, but yes, I am a girl. And being able to type that right now, after so long being unable to muster the strength, makes me feel like that misery was worth it.
So, there went nothing. My official entry in the "worst post ever" contest. I'm going to let the cats back in here so they can eat and and I'll go take a shower now. I'll check back in on the mayhem later.
Hoooooooly shit.