Here we go.

 I had known there was something wrong with me from a very young age.  I don’t remember exactly when, but I remember that it was in the house we lived in from age 6 through 10, my mother had off-hand mentioned an old wives tale that “If you kiss your elbow, you’ll turn into a girl”  

That night, I lay awake in my bunk bed late into the night trying to get my elbow to my lips.  I nearly dislocated my shoulder before I gave up, disappointed.  

Like much of Gen-X, I was a latch-key kid.  Both of my parents worked, and they figured that after age 10 I could make it through a couple hours alone without killing myself.  From the time I got off my bus around 3pm, until my Dad got home from work at 5pm I had the house to myself.   This was when I would raid my mother’s closet and try on her outfits, stuffing the bras with rolled up sweat socks and nearly panicking the time i caused a run in one of her pantyhose.  This became a standard after school activity until my Dad came home early one day.  Hearing the garage door, I darted back to their room, skirt trailing in the wind and desperately tried to change.  I still had my mother’s bra hanging from one shoulder when my father caught me.  The stern strict Catholic’s reaction was not violent, but it was disdainful, insulting and scathing.  I feel my ears burn and my cheeks flush in embarrassment again right now thinking of that moment.  I never touched my mother’s clothes again after that and stuffed that part of myself down as deep as I possibly could. 

I started playing youth football and threw myself into it as hard as I could to prove to my father that I was a ‘real man.’ I made team captain my second year playing and had 3 years experience before I even got to highschool.   I was the captain of the Freshman team too and my coach would actually trust me to lead block and tackle drills with the kids who needed the extra help. 
My football career ended when my knee was bent the wrong way in the middle of a game.  I did the PT and iced it before every practice and game.  I was back on the field faster than anyone had expected but I was playing hurt.  When the season ended, and my mother saw how slowly I was coming down the stairs, she took me to the doctor who told us that I needed to take some time off from contact sports.  

I had, however, accomplished my mission.  My Father saw me as the dedicated athlete never afraid to take the hard hits and willing to push through.  I was a ‘tough guy’ and a ‘real man’ in his eyes and in the eyes of the other students at my high school.  Even the kids who didn’t like me never questioned my masculinity.   The one word never used against me was ‘fag’ 

After football, I found my way to the theater.  Even there, after a failed audition, I gravitated toward the ‘manly’ tech work.  I became the student lighting director, personally acquainted with every circuit and lighting instrument in the school auditorium.  After a year in lighting I took over for our graduating sound guy and spent shows in the theater’s “bat cave” moving sound sliders up and down through the shows.  I eventually made my way on stage but never in a musical, I liked to perform, but dancing and singing would just seem to ‘gay’ and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.    

At a cast party, I was making out with a girl when she commented that I was the ‘straightest boy I know” I reveled in the fact that I had maintained my reputation.  I don’t remember who it was who said that.  I made out with a lot of girls in those years.  

At home, though, raids on my mother’s closet had been replaced with raids on the bookshelf and the liquor cabinet.  I would pour bourbon and sip it while I read and reread the DSM-5 definition of Transexuality, Transvestim and Autogynophelia.  I would close my eyes in disgust with myself, and finish my drink.  Luckily my father was a daily drinker so my own habit was never caught.  

I spent a lot of time in the woods near our house.  One time I felt so much pent up anger, and unfocused frustration that I took up a fresh stick and “Made a clearing” Swinging with all my might and knocking down every bit of underbrush in a wide area.  I would have these waves of rage and tears, and I couldn’t understand why. 

 
I discovered Transgender Fiction on the Internet way back in the early days of the Nifty Archive.  Stories of forced feminization always.  Never stories about happy transitions.  After all I was a normal man, this was about “dominance”  not wish fulfillment (Self delusion) If I hadn’t avoided those positive stories, maybe I would have had my moment sooner.  

I met a girl, I fell in love, I got married, I raised a family.  All this time, I still indulged in this guilty pleasure, Transgender fiction and transgender captions.  Reading Nifty, Fictionmania, Crystal’s Palace, and TG Storytime.  But that was all just fetish to me.  Nothing to worry about. 

But then RealLifeComics showed up on my Twitter feed one fine day in 2022.   I had been a daily reader of those comics back in the 2000s but life and an erratic posting schedule ended that.  

So I clicked through the link and read the entire miniseries, about how Greg Dean was always a coping mechanism to protect Mae Dean from a world that may not accept her because she was labeled male at birth, and how it was time for Greg to fade away and let Mae be Mae.   

https://reallifecomics.com/comic.php?comic=july-17-2020

I closed my laptop. 
I walked out of the house to where my wife and my kids couldn’t see me.   

Then, I wept for a long time.  

At first, not knowing why.   

Then I knew why and didn’t want it to be true.  

Then I wept over what this may do to my marriage, and my family. 

Now I struggle with what to do with my knowledge. 

My wife knows that I’m not CIS.  I told her that Katie is a part of me, but  but to what extent?  I don’t realy know myself so I don’t know what to tell her.   She was not exactly overjoyed with the news, and I suppose I’ll cover that in a future post.  

  
I don’t think I am purely transgender. 

I am not ONLY Katie.  I don’t THINK The Man I have been for over 40 years is ONLY a coping mechanism.  I enjoy being him a lot.   But I can’t ONLY be him any more.  Now that I know that SHE is in there, wanting a taste of this world, I have to let her have some of it.   

Maybe HE is just like Greg,  a coping mechanism, and in time I will realize it and he will fade away.  Maybe I am just Katie.   That may be my truth some day, but today I am both HIM and Katie.  

The important thing is, I now recognize that Katie is here.  Her name and her personality were just here waiting for me to notice, but ever since that moment with my Dad, I had done everything (With a couple exceptions I will talk about in another time) to hide her, even from myself. 

SO I owe Mae Dean so much gratitude.   It was her comic that she had written in 2020 and that I finally saw in 2022, that “cracked my egg” but to me it was like finally opening a prison door I had locked part of myself behind when I was 13.  

So this blog is going to be my journal. 
Discovering who I am and facing the world with the simple fact that I cannot hide Katie any longer. 
I seek to live as my authentic self.  

I just wish I knew who that was.