age and trans...was it a factor for you?

[Deleted]

Thoughts? Progression, cultural pressures, midlife crisis, getting help young....

[Laura J]

I wish I'd have figured this out young.
I envy some of these amazing teens who are
already getting a grasp on they're identies.
Most will enjoy an awesome life being authentic.

To do all of this at an older age, you really have
to be young at heart. I know most of us are like that,
and its a very positive thing.

[Edge]

I worried I wasn't "really trans" for awhile because I didn't know since childhood. I mean, I had thoughts, but I didn't figure it out until my early twenties.
Other than that, that's about it. I'm glad I'm figuring it out now. I wish I had figured it out earlier, but oh well.

[ThePhoenix]

Age was a very small factor in that I had heard that the people who "transition best" tend to be those who started HRT before age 35. So I felt that if I was going to transition, I wanted to make sure I fit in that category.

[Deleted]

A lot of people my age had never considered transition as it seemed totally out of the question and prior to the Internet there was very little information about it other than a few stories of now famous people who traveled to Europe and had surgeries in secret. But for me any thoughts I entertained about being the other gender were only in dreams or fleeting fantasies until I was fifty-one and the blossom of youth had long since passed me by.

[Deleted]

Well I am the strange one. I knew from an early age. I kind of blended all the shit together. When I was ten most people thought I was my mom's and dad's daughter. Funny because most boys would have been mad or offended at that. I wasn't. This is totally before puberty so it really didn't make much sense at the time. Now it does. Once I reached puberty it made a little sense but kind of fucked me up too. I mean what 14 year old boy grows small tits? Apparently me.  What 13 or 14 year old boy is attracted to other boys and other girls? Well apparently me.

So was age a factor for me? Not really. Trans was a really big one though even as far back as I can remember. I played with dolls and hated cars and trucks, you know the Tonka toys that most boys played with? I hated getting dirty. Hated having to get a haircut and ended up running away when it was ever mentioned. Mom and Dad got tired of looking for me and said "screw it". Oh I was jealous of all my cute cousins in their pretty Easter dresses and I had to wear shorts or pants. When I turned 16 I could hide it really good with friends and boyfriends. When I was 18 then I didn't hide it too much. When I was in my early 20's I decided to test it for four years and that was a big fail and 48 months of hell. 3 days into Basic I knew I made a mistake. I should have stood up tall but didn't and roughed it out. If I would have had to go another 6 months I would be dead right now. I went crazy after I got out. Full on and then it subsided a little and ended up getting married for a while. ANother fucking fail. You think I would have learned my lesson but I really thought she could have been a lesbian. She called me pretty more times than I can admit. She told me several times I should have been a girl. Hell she loved it when I was shopping with her and liked the same movies she did. She did say I tended to spend a little too much time in the women's section of the stores even after she was finished shopping. Hell I taught her how to do her makeup and taught her to shape her brows. OMG what a slob. "But it hurts to pluck my brows". Really? :rolleyes:When I told her she went "Ape shit" on me. She didn't mind as long as we were shopping. She didn't mind when we watched Sleepless in Seattle 10 times. Not to mention Cabin by the Lake and all the others. Ho much louder can I scream. But I got a slap in the face when I told her. Then all the fucked up names followed.

So no age wasn't a factor. I was the one that was always a "sissy", gay or a "faggot" when I was young. No one wanted me on their teams in PE in school. But I was a fucking TRANSGIRL not gay but bi and the word "faggot" What the hell is a faggot anyway? OMG I had enough girlfriends and boyfriends. The boyfriends I kind of kept secret and if they could drive we would haul ass to better places. Until I just didn't care anymore. I think I came to this realization when I was 16 and started carrying a stiletto. I ain't talking about the heels either. Yeah I got beat up a couple of times. Bring the blade out and they think different. I got raped even once when I was really young against my will and once by someone that thought he was the shit but couldn't be seen with a transgirl. Or have a transgirlfriend. He was drunk at the time. Hell I may have let him rape me even . I told him no but everything else was saying yes. But no I still wouldn't change anything at all.

In life there are many factors. I can't narrow it down to just one thing. All I know is that I have always had this feeling even before I knew anything about sexual orientation or gender identification. The feelings have never wavered. I tried to dispel them and spent four years in hell. I tried to test it again and spent ten years in hell. So screw it. I am who I am. I found a really good guy so far. We take trips and leave my dad with a sitter and we can go our and I can be the real me 100%. I can still be the real me most of the time without makeup unless going out for gigs. or when he goes to bed and I can dress for him and me. But no I am me. No apologies and definitely no excuses and anyone except for my dad that don't like it can kiss my ass. He can too if he ever says shit about my legs or under arms. Even no little hairs on my chest. I can only go so far. He hasn't noticed my toenails yet which pretty much stay painted. but if he ask? I don't know. I am his only "daughter". He does know about the long hair, the lack of body hair and the itty bitty titties. But the toenails in pretty colors? But hey.....What can I say? I am me. Take me or leave me. I make no apologies or excuses.

[Ativan Prescribed]

I pretty much always knew, but the realization didn't really kick in until grade school.
I had the usual troubles with being picked on and that.
High school was a gradual kind of thing, it took me awhile to get used to how some knew and how I let some know.
Secrets and not so secret. My last year was when I cared very little who knew of my friends and maybe their friends.
I was a little bad ass most of the time, and that confused a lot of people. I seemed pretty girly but could maybe kick their ass.
I was always trying to prove I could be better at most things I tried. A lot of times I was better than the best of the guys at things.
But I also spent a lot of time alone as well. There were times I just needed to be me and not have to think about it.
High school over, I never looked back. I was determined to man up once and for all. Did construction work, operated some heavy equipment, etc.
I had a Harley and found myself hanging out with some pretty bad ass dudes, more or less outlaw bikers.
Then things changed and I wanted to do more, so I found myself at 20 yrs old in a backwater third world country.
Where I lived, there was a earthquake and I was exposed to the death and the aftermath of peoples sufferings.
The job changed as I changed one day and I did things that people just shouldn't have to do. I was surrounded by death and was losing my mind at the same time.
It was then that I started to see the different parts of my gender and how they worked. She was the risk taker and got a helluva lot tougher.
He became the intellectual one. But this all worked together most of the time. Going insane was where I found myself, as my gender was splitting in the way I thought.
The time did come that it was all just to much at once one day. To much death and I couldn't pull myself together and the insanity of it made my gender thinking leave me.
I know that sounds weird, but the she and he seemed so far away in my thinking, it was like they were gone. I was losing it, I lost it.
It took a long time, I think, I don't really know, before I was more settled and instead of that duality, I was more singular in my thinking, but could easily see different ways that my gender allowed me to think of things.
Life went on, I even had a couple kids, and then things didn't work out with their mother and I lost it again, I was left with nothing, literally nothing but a couple changes of clothes.
She made sure that I suffered as best she could make me.
So I spent time in and out of psyche units, lived in places with other people who had some real mental problems, but things got better.
And they also got worse again. I stayed suicidal most of the time up until about seven years ago and decided that enough was enough and wanted to know what this gender stuff of mine was about.
I have been seeing a therapist weekly, which quickly turned into a gender therapist and I was also seeing a pretty good psychologist, one who is a contributor and more to the SOC.
I have a different one now, but she is the person in charge of the transgender stuff where I go. I like her, she gets it, she gets all of you and me.
So I am still learning new things, a lot of it from people I've gotten to know and some I never did on forums, online at places.

So it seems like I have always known, but it took real life altering experiences to actually let myself think clearly about it.
Seven years ago, I woke up in a state hospital and had no idea who I was, literally. A massive ECT had been done.
I remembered a lot of stuff right away, but there has always been a lot I know I should be able to access in memories that just aren't there.
Early-mid fifties. I guess that was when I decided to really face it and do something about it.
Better late then never, because really, when it comes right down to it, I'm pretty happy that I did.
It gets tough sometimes, but so doesn't most things in life.
Ativan

[Leena]

I pretty much always knew, I got caught crossdressing, wearing one of my sister's lacy tank tops under my T-shirt in the first grade. It's hard to say how much the after effects of that shaped me, everyone at the whole school found out I wore a "bra"…it's not something you live down, I was called female versions of my name, and lots of other things until I moved away, to another state, and people there gave me hell just for being from a different part of the country. The kids that were giving me hell about being a crossdresser were actually far less mean spirited than the redneck ones that gave me hell about being from up North. God knows what they would have done to me, had they known I was trans…moving to a small town in the Deep South shaped me more than just age…I had to come up with this fake masculine identity, though I was able to grow my hair long…I was not dysphoric though, but when I left, I slowly realized how that identity was not really me…though parts of it are…I loved the hair...

[Deleted]

Mar 26, 2015 13:13:28 GMT 8 Leena said:

I pretty much always knew, I got caught crossdressing, wearing one of my sister's lacy tank tops under my T-shirt in the first grade. It's hard to say how much the after effects of that shaped me, everyone at the whole school found out I wore a "bra"…it's not something you live down, I was called female versions of my name, and lots of other things until I moved away, to another state, and people there gave me hell just for being from a different part of the country. The kids that were giving me hell about being a crossdresser were actually far less mean spirited than the redneck ones that gave me hell about being from up North. God knows what they would have done to me, had they known I was trans…moving to a small town in the Deep South shaped me more than just age…I had to come up with this fake masculine identity, though I was able to grow my hair long…I was not dysphoric though, but when I left, I slowly realized how that identity was not really me…though parts of it are…I loved the hair...

Like Tony Soprano said, "Whataya gonna do Veronica? So ya do whatya gotta do!" 

[Metamorph]

I pretty much always knew but there wasn't a lot of info out there. I had heard of transwomen but not transmen and I knew I wasn't fully male, but I was quite firm in that I didn't identify as female. So, this day and age with the wealth of info on the internet helped a lot. Was age a factor? That's a hard one to answer. I had to deal with my past first.

[Deleted]

Starting transition at 33 was definitely a concern, but I've never been very physically masculine. There's some evidence of possible 47, XXY going on, so I knew that would work in my favor. I'd say it has, because I do not look like I'm 33. I think I'm immortal. I certainly feel like I'm at least 1,000 years old. One of the biggest issues for me is having a receding hairline, but I'm pleasantly surprised to say it's actually growing back in some. So, as of now, age is no longer a factor for me.