Ok! So from a young age if there was any word that could be used to describe myself it would be 'horrible'. I have been told that during the time that I can't remember (age 1 -> 7) I was the most terrible child possible. I was always angry and always screaming and always always unhappy (the unhappiness didn't stop till about 20-21). Trips to the store were hard as I would constantly grab things off the shelves and throw them to the ground, demand that *insert random item here* was bought for me etc. etc. Now I know that children can be bad but from what I hear from family and family friends I was tremendously unbearable.
Although my parents always bought me toys I would always steal my sisters. I was never interested in her toy horse collection but Polly-in-my-pocket was the business! Throughout my teenage years I stole my sister's toys, I read her babysitter club books and (shhh) sometimes I'd steal her clothes. Now my parents never saw any of this, whether from plain denial or just dumb lack of notice. So life continued as normal.
I was a very angry and unhappy child, I always got in fights with random people and I was constantly in detention until around 12 years old when I started to avoid getting caught =P I was a lost cause until the boys of the school I went to (I went to an all boys school, not the best choice for my parents to send me to but how were they to know) started to hang out with girls of other schools. About the same time I started working and made some friends at the Pizza hut call center.
At Pizza hut I met two lovely people, Cathy and Missy. Missy was the first lesbian I had ever met and she was so kind to me. She had a love of gay boy fan-fiction and loved the gay scene generally. It was to these two people that I first admitted that I didn't think I was the normal everyday straight individual, and it was because of them that I started attempting to dress something other than shabby =P
The girls from the other school were an interesting experience and I enjoyed hanging out with them all, in particular two girls named Chi and Cat. Both these girls were very kind and friendly to me, and they helped me slowly lower my fear of being weird and different. It was only through them that I managed to move on from what I was at that time, and because of how much they helped me I decided to have a talk to my parents about my confusion. One day I told my mum 'I don't think I'm normal, I might be gay or something' and she replied with a look of shock and the words 'Are you selling yourself to rich men in the valley?'. I was so saddened by this that I never mentioned anything to them till much later, and I always remember when I asked them what they thought of gay people and mum said 'We once knew a gay couple, I guess some of them can be bearable people, not my cup of tea though'.
Throughout this time I was constantly stealing and borrow female clothes and trying them (hiding it from EVERYONE I knew). But every time I did this I would just end up collapsing in depression as my ganky teenage body looked like crap in anything I tried on. I even once stole my sister's formal dress (seriously, shhh) and tried it on when everyone in the house was out. This was turned up a notch and even happened slightly publicly when I moved out of house with a bunch of poor goths. But still, at that point it was really nothing more than poor cross dressing.
So I moved out of that poor dirty share house to go back home and started going out with my friend from school, Chi. We went out for three years where she slowly helped me find clothes that would suit my gawkish body and help me to overcome my feelings of self disgust. However it broke my heart that the further I got towards the goal I wanted my relationship with Chi dissolved as she realized that she was dating a female, not exactly what she had been aiming for.
Regardless, she helped me find a therapist who could help me and pushed me towards my goal. This, in my opinion, happened just in time as I was beginning to not just hate myself but hate all those beautiful natural girls that didn't even know how lucky they were. I remember distinct days where I would drive to work and cry the entire time, glaring at every girl I saw on the street.
Things picked up as I saw my therapist weekly for almost a year, coming out to my parents about 3/4 of the way through this period. My mum cried and was confused and all my dad did was nod (still to this day he really has never commented on the situation, I don't know what his take on it is). From that point it's really been a slow progression like I talked about in my last blog, talking to therapists and psychs, taking drugs and seeing more therapists. Lots of confusion and telling people, the usual crap. To this day however only three people have ever had a problem with me. One just took a while to get used to it, one avoids eye contact with me whenever we meet a mutual friend's parties and the other is offended (which is really something considering my super Christian aunt has no problem with it). Life could be much harder =)
All this led to what I consider to be a pretty sweet life now =) Especially now I can finally date again. Three years without any kind of relationship really really really sucks (and the first relationship only lasted a month and was not much more than pain).
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