grandfitzpoobah666 wrote:thank you, really appreciate it <3
i wrote some responses to this thread, but they havent gone through yet so you'll have to forgive me
The health subforum can be a bit slow sometimes. If you responded to me as well, then I hope it goes through soon.
In case you were curious if it was just a sexual thing for me based on the answers I gave, I decided to write a bit about my childhood to give you a better perspective of the context leading up to my decisions.
When I was 2-4 years old, I thought I was a girl and mostly played with other girls. I was happy. I did notice my parents called me a boy, but I didn't know the meaning of the word or that a boy couldn't be a girl too, so I didn't think much of it.
When I was 4 years old, my mom cut my hair very short, like a buzz cut. Afterwards, my friends started telling me one by one that they couldn't play with a boy. I was very sad and lonely, and since then I've always wanted to have long hair, although my parents only allowed me have it at a medium length until I was 15. I felt misunderstood and started to wonder if there wasn't some way to make others see me as a girl.
A year later when I was exploring the playground on my own, I found a way to leave it. I walked through a passage surrounded by tall hedges and made it to the streets, which were empty at the time. After standing there for about a minute and enjoying the peace and quiet, I turned around to return to the playground and saw an adult woman with long, dark hair. Although I didn't recognise her, she seemed familiar somehow. She said that if I really wanted to be a girl, then I should ask an adult for help. A few seconds later she vanished, and I felt like I had just woken up from a dream. I returned to the playground and thought about what she said.
The next day, I told my dad that I heard it's possible for a boy to become a girl, and asked him, hypothetically, what he thinks of people who do that sort of thing. He told me he's heard about it before, and that people like that go through many painful and dangerous surgeries, and that it's often very hectic both for them and the people close to them. He also said that it's irreversible, so people who do that kind of thing need to be really sure they want it. It sounded very scary, so I figured that wasn't what I wanted after all.
I thought about it some more, and concluded that even if I'm a boy, it's fine as long as I can just do the things I like. Later that week, I brought it up again to both of my parents at the same time. I told them that I didn't want to become a girl, but I just wanted to play with girly toys. They said that was fine and bought me some.
I became interested in magick and alchemy, since I thought that was the only way I could actually become a girl. I learned how to see, feel and control the energy around me. However, in doing so I started to become aware of the thoughts of others around me. A lot of people close to me were going through difficult times, and I didn't know how to handle their emotions; besides that, I didn't know how to apply any of it to make actual progress towards my goal. As such, I lost interest again after a year.
The boys in my class were often being vulgar or harassing girls, and I started to think that it was their fault that my friends abandoned me, since girls probably assumed all boys are like that. As such, I would hit them whenever they did anything like that, and forced them to apologise for their behaviour. Two boys in my class who were being bullied before that became friends with me, since I protected them.
When I was 7 years old, I asked my mom before going to school if she could put my hair in a ponytail, and she did. However, when I arrived at school and as I was on my way to the classroom, I saw people pointing at me and heard them whispering things about me. I started to feel nervous, and by the time I was near the classroom I was too afraid to go inside. I ran away and hid in a corner under some stairs. I wanted to look cute, but I didn't want others to think I was weird. After about 30 minutes one of my friends came to look for me and found me. After talking to him, I took off the hairband and went to the classroom with him.
When I was 8 years old, I met a girl from another class who would play with me even though I was a boy. We played with dolls and played house together. A year later, she whispered in my ear that she loves me. After thinking briefly, I whispered back that I like her too. To be close to someone who wouldn't abandon me for being a boy seemed nice, so I didn't mind being a couple.
It turned out she was considered the prettiest girl in her class, and a lot of boys were jealous of me. They would look for me and pick a fight with me or insult me. As they provoked me I would simply punch them, they would cry, and then I would bring them to the teacher so we could both tell our side of the story, apologise to each other, and settle the matter. Although I tried my best to handle situations like that the best I could, it still got to me as I started to wonder if everyone hated me and was trying pick on me because they thought I was weird. My wish changed from "I wish I could be a girl" to "I wish I could be normal".
In an attempt to seem normal, I began to repress all of my emotions, and built a persona that I thought seemed like a normal boy. However, instead of fitting in better, others started saying I seemed like a robot. When I turned 10, I started going to a different building for school and wasn't able to see my girlfriend anymore (she was younger than me so she still attended school in the old building), as well as one of my two male friends who had to repeat a grade. I felt incredibly lonely, but realised that was just an emotion too, so I repressed it like I did any other. I forgot how to smile around that time.
When I was 12 years old, I started to hate my body. Not for any reason in particular that I was aware of, since my emotions were too repressed for me to understand any of them. No matter, I thought, I'll just repress that feeling too. "I am not my body, it's just a means for me to exert my influence upon this world." As I affirmed that every morning, I began to feel disconnected from reality, and every day turned into a haze. My memories from that time are vague, and I was diagnosed with ADD for being absent-minded all the time.
One night when I was 13 years old, I started to think that I wanted to be raped. I thought I wanted someone to love my unsightly body and force me to enjoy it. When I tried to fall asleep after that, I hallucinated again about the woman I saw when I was 5 years old, but this time she was scantily clad and had feathery wings. She pinned me down forcibly while maintaining eye contact. While logically I thought I should be excited, instead I was starting to feel increasingly overwhelmed by unfamiliar emotions and began to struggle frantically, to no avail as she wouldn't budge at all. Then she let go and asked me with a serious tone: "did you really want this?", before vanishing again. I realised that things like that are horrible when they actually happen, and understood the importance of consent and doing things like that only with someone I really love. But I also felt rather hopeless, since I was afraid to get close to anyone when I felt the way I did about my body. For the time being, I started to consider myself asexual since I figured I wasn't compatible with anyone the way I was.
When I was 14 years old, I started to think that crying myself to sleep every night isn't something a normal boy would do, which had been happening for several months already even though I tried my best to hold back the tears. Then I thought: "in order to be normal, I have to get to the root of the problem and solve it so that I can stop crying." So that night, I looked through many old things stashed away in my bedroom to refresh my memories of my childhood. I remembered how strongly I wished to be a girl. I remembered the conversation I had with my dad about it when I was 5, and looked it up to find that there really are ways for people to transition to the opposite sex, and that it's called transsexuality. My first thought was, "that isn't normal". However, I realised that with how much it was affecting me, it wasn't something I should ignore anymore, and also that my act wasn't really helping me seem normal in the first place. The next morning I told my parents that I want to be a girl, and my mom asked me why. Since my emotions were still repressed I had no idea why, so instead I gave the first logical answer I could think of: "boys are stupid and I don't want to be one". She said that was the stupidest reason she had ever heard, and warned me that even if I went down that kind of path, things like my voice, which was already getting deeper at the time, wouldn't change back. Based on what she said, I started to think it was already too late for me, and I didn't know how to seek help anyway since I wasn't taken seriously, so I gave up on it again.
I started growing breast buds around this time despite being underweight. I was happy initially, but they didn't grow much more due to me being too skinny. I wondered if even nature was toying with me at this point. Even so, as small as they were, it was still something that I secretly took pride in, and it helped my self-esteem a little bit.
When I was 15 years old, I went on a trip with my family to a distant relative's place. My brother and I were staying in a room that used to belong to their daughter who had moved out. I was feeling slightly ill and needed to rest, so I stayed in the room while my family went out in to the city. I noticed some of their daughter's old clothes were still in the wardrobe, and decided to try them on and looked at myself in the mirror. I liked how I looked for the first time in years. I kept coming up with excuses to stay home alone for a short amount of time while my family went out so I could do it more. It felt bittersweet because I knew I wasn't supposed to do that, and also because even if I looked that way in the mirror, my body was still the same underneath. Even so, I couldn't stop myself. After about 5 days we left to head back home, and I began to feel extremely depressed.
I couldn't be normal. I couldn't be who I wanted to be. I couldn't live freely. I couldn't be happy. I didn't want to be alive, but I didn't want to make my parents sad by dying. I was unable to fall asleep because the negative thoughts kept me awake, so I stayed up and delved into intellectual and creative pursuits in order to distract myself until I became tired enough to stop thinking and pass out, sleeping only 4 hours most nights.
One evening when I got home from school, my older brother asked me what's going on. I asked him what he meant, and he said that every day I come back from school looking more depressed, and that if I killed myself because he didn't do anything, he would never forgive himself. I said there was no point in telling him, but he told me to tell him anyway. I stayed quiet for a moment to think, then sighed and walked into the kitchen to wash my hands. However, he grabbed my arms and held them behind my back, and said that he wouldn't let go until I told him what was wrong. I said I wanted to wash my hands and asked him to please let go, but instead he began twisting my arm slightly and commanded that I tell him. As he started twisting it harder I said I'd tell him and asked him to stop, which he did. I told him that I want to be a girl. He sighed with relief and said, "so that's what it was."
He asked me if I had told our parents, and I said I did a year ago but they didn't take me seriously. He asked if it was okay for him to talk to them about it and I told him to go ahead. A few minutes later my parents came to talk to me and they said they thought I had lost interest since I didn't bring it up anymore. I explained that the reason I didn't bring it up anymore is because my mom's answers had made me feel hopeless. They called a doctor who did a house visit and asked me some questions, and based on my answers he sent a letter to a clinic that specialises in this kind of thing to put me in the queue with a high priority.
A week later while I was sitting on the edge of my bed, I saw my leg. Suddenly I thought: "I am my leg." Or rather, I realised that my body is not just a vessel for my mind, but that it is also who I am. I finally woke up from the haze I had been in for so long, and also realised that if I want to be happy, I have to listen to my emotions, because happiness isn't something you can create with logic alone.
Since it was clear to me by now that no one at my school thought I was normal anyway (with my unusually high grades, a project I did being sent to university to be checked because it was too far above the teacher's level, the mysterious air around me due to me not talking much and never smiling, and the exaggerated rumours about my past, most people considered me an eccentric genius), I decided to just do what I want and see where that takes me. So I shaved my legs, grew my hair out, and bought some more feminine clothes to wear to school. Instead of panicking when people whispered things about me like when I was 7 years old, I waited for people to come to me to ask me about it, and answered them honestly. "I thought the hair on my legs looked gross, so I shaved it." "I always wanted to have long hair, so I grew it out." "Everything in the men's section looked so boring and overpriced, so I bought these clothes instead because I think they look nicer." Everyone just accepted those answers, and I even made friends for the first time in years. I began to smile again, and the principal said to me that seeing me smile for the first time after all these years lifted a weight.
I've had quite an active love life since then, which has only become more fulfilling over time as I figured out my preferences more clearly. I'm with a very tall and handsome man now who loves me for who I am regardless of whether I'm male or intersex or female, and is even willing to marry me. Since I've started to follow my heart, so many of my dreams have come true that used to seem impossible when I was 15. Not once have I regretted my decision, even if it was scary or difficult at times. Nowadays I'm always doing what I want to instead of what I think others expect from me; if I had the courage to do that from the start, then my childhood might've been a lot more fun, but what matters is that I'm fine now.
I still have dreams, such as achieving immortality and becoming a mother someday, but those aren't things that need to be rushed. They're ambitions that I can take my time with to figure them out, just like everyone else is doing with their dreams. Even if something seems impossible in the moment, that's no reason to give up; because if you keep growing as a person, then someday it may not be impossible for you anymore. To me, that's also part of what it means to be a Zevist; to always keep striving and doing your best.
On a side note, when I was 12 years old, I heard that a year after the girl I was a couple with became unable to see me anymore, she started asking out the boys in her class one by one, only to break up with them after anywhere between 30 seconds to a week. By the end of that year she had "dated" all of the boys in her class. I was always a bit confused what the deal with her was after hearing that, but I just looked up her instagram and apparently she married a woman a few years ago and they recently adopted a girl that they're raising together. It makes me wonder if she asked out all the boys in her class because she was looking for a replacement for me, but was unable to find anyone. Either way, she looks happy now, so I'm glad. I really appreciated that she was there for me back then.
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