At the age of three, I became convince my life would have been a better life if only I had been born a girl. This was not an issue of gender identity. I do not consider myself transgender. I am a sissy. I grew up in a household of discord and frustration I felt this as a child..
I was born male. However, my parents had been expecting a girl. A sonogram from from months before had led them to believe they were having a a girl. In preparation for a daughter, the nursery was decorate in pink with a very girly ambiance. Being born a son was invitationally seen as a temporary change of plan. My parents had been planning on a larger family and waiting for the desired daughter was simply coping with the unexpected,
A month after my birth, my parents had a meeting with the doctor and he informed them that the delivery had revealed serious medical issues. He recommended against a second pregnancy. [As you will learn later, he should have cautioned against a third pregnancy. More on that later.] The doctor informed them that this could still be their decision but he cautioned strongly against it.
I became more cognizant of the world around me and it really bothered me that my patents argued all the time. It seemed most of their arguments were about me in some way. Mom was adamant. No more children. Dad wanted a larger family but was willing to settle for a daughter. Meanwhile, the walls of my bedroom remained pink, an item on their shared to do list that never seemed to get done. My desire to be a girl was more about a desire for my parents to be happy. If i was a girl, my parents would be happy.
Divorce and My Mother Joins The Army
I came to realize that much of the issue between my parents was alcohol. Maybe they could have resolved the differences about their family, but the drinking got worse. They divorced and within a few months he had left Spokane never to be seen again. More a few months struggled to make ends meet but it was not happening. Raising a child and working to support the child was just too difficult. She came up with a solution. She enlisted and I moved in with Grandma.
I did not understand all the grown-up considerations that went into her decision but I did feel that somehow if I had been born a girl Mom would not have joined the Army. I moved in with my Grandmother still convinced that somehow all would be so much better if I had been born a girl. My desire to be a girl was not a private wish. I often shared my willingness to be a girl. This did not change with my move to a new home and Mom’s departure. My grandmother became convinced that I had to be a transgender child. For whatever reasons, this seemed to pleased my grandmother. I found myself wanting to be a girl because my grandmother wanted me to be transgender. This may not be a correct understanding. However, over what was essentially my primary school years, my desire to be a girl became less about Mom and Dad and more about Grandma.
My Desire Becomes My Desire
I tend to see the third stage of my life beginning in the fourth grade. However, if iI am being really honest, I think I would have to say I started to feel different in the third grade. For instance, I kissed my first boy as a third grader. That was different. After over two years of living with my grandmother, going on a third, I had come to accept her belief that I was transgender. Mine you, I had no understanding of what it meant to be transgender. I simply accept the opinion of a grownup. Around the third grade and definitely by fourth grade, I became convince of that identity. My grandmother had given me the freedom to explore my feminine preferences. I had grown very fond of wearing dresses. I had also developed an interest in boys. From what my young mind understood about transgender, it seems to fill in the puzzles of my life. I guess the best way to describe this stage is to stay for the first time being a girl was about my happiness — not the happiness of grownups.
If there was any consistent message my grandmother had stressed to me about being transgender is was that value of being true to myself, to living a life free of shame, to the value of honesty. In the third grade I had started sharing with some of my classmates that I like wearing dresses. It was not something I announced to all but even telling a few of my classmates meant it was not long before all knew. I will leave it to another post to discuss how this honesty lead to my first kiss. For now, it is enough to know that by the time I entered fourth grade it was well known that i was transgender. Of course, this meant just as little to my classmates as it meant to me. And a few of the kids, mostly other boys, started calling me sissy.
Discarding The Lie
I am not a confrontational person. I hated it when others called me a sissy. That was name-calling and simply wrong. I was not a sissy. I was transgender. Since I am not confrontational I opted for a second approach. I sought out information. I begam looking for information at the local library. (The school library had nothing of value.) There was not a great deal of information to be found but the more I learned about being transgender the more disturbed I became.
When I was ten my grandmother had me begin counseling for gender identity. I did not lie to the counselors who interviewed and tested me. I simply gave them the answers consistent from what i knew about being transgender, what i had learned from my grandmother. In time I was put on blockers and hormones. Years later, my mother would reveal to me that Grandma had gone to five doctors before she found on willing to prescript the blockers and hormones to a child my age. Bottom line, I had become throughly convinced during this process that i had to be transgender as all the grown ups said I was. However, I began my research with my own questions and my own reasons for doing so. The more I learned about being transgender, the more I knew I was not transgender.
Over a period of time, I began to realize that my desire to disprove the school yard name-calling had had a totally different result . I had proved to myself that I was a sissy. Nothing had changed for me. I still wanted to be a girl. By this time my desire to be a girl had magnified by several times. I could no longer claim the label of transgender. I had no other label to accept besides that of sissy. Something else had not changed. The lessons my grandmother has taught me about be true to oneself, and personal honesty. I took the label of sissy without any shame. I was even proud of myself for doing the work to be honest with myself about who I was.
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