When I talk about being a transsexual person, I don't know exactly how to describe it in a way that shows complete awareness of myself. It's hard to discuss, but all I know is that I had a set of situations. Some, I may've shown good ability to be critical of myself. Others, perhaps I was just acting out my own poor mental health. I wish I could understand why it is that I am this way. On one hand, I can't justify any current trends towards the extreme transgender movement we see today. On the other, I can't deny at all that my problems weren't very, very real to me.
I had always played dress up in roles that were typical of young girls. But nobody really cared, because that was normal experimentation for a young person. I wasn't interested in changing gender, whatsoever. There were plenty of situations where I showed gender abnormality, at a young age. But nobody questioned it.
The moment that things started to fuck up severely were when I turned 10. I'd noticed some masculine development. My parents got me a little book on puberty. I was pretty bad at remembering certain things, so I read the book through at least 3 times.
Whenever I looked at the boy parts of the book, I felt very ill. To think that would be my body was really a terrifying thought. I would look at the girls body changes, and I wasn't at all sexually attracted to the concept. I looked at her body and said "That's what I want to happen to me.". But I had absolutely no clue it was possible to be transgender. I would ponder about that every night. I'd imagine myself finding that I had started growing breasts overnight. It'd make me feel really happy just to think about.
Then some time around the summer, I found out about a woman on TV who was 'transgender'. This person really amused my sister. I was absolutely confused by the hype. She told me that "She used to be a man! Now she's a woman!". I suddenly felt very, very different.
I looked up transgender online. And I would look at medical resources regarding young people. I would see people who were given hormone treatment at 12-13. And I would cry. I would imagine that it would never be possible for me.
I stumbled across a relatively level-headed chatroom when I was 11. I told them I was 13, and was allowed to join. They told me that it was very important that I allowed all options to be a possibility. That it's okay to feel abnormal, and that I could end up male, or end up transitioning. And that regardless of which happens, it's important I feel completely comfortable. And I did.
I spent much of the next year telling myself I was a boy. And that it was okay to be a boy, because my gender didn't matter. That I didn't need to be a girl, I could just be who I wanted to be. And that I should stop thinking about gender. This worked until my voice started dropping, and my body started growing very rapidly. I would try to keep my voice up. I would be very, very desperate not to go through it all.
I told my parents at 12 that I was struggling with my physical sex, and that I felt I was a transsexual. They were.. dismissive. To say the least. They would inspect my room, they took the only female clothing I'd ever bought and threw it out. They banned me from conversing with people online about the condition.
Until they finally gave up when I was 13, and took me to the doctor, who sent me to a therapist. That therapist just happened to specialize heavily in Freudian psychology. He believed that my issues were born out of a sexual obsession. He told my parents that I mustn't be entertained in my fetishistic desires.
I, of course, was not happy. I was scared that I was some kind of freakish deviant. That there was something so severely wrong with me, and that the lady I saw on TV those few years ago was some sexual fetishist that'd tricked me into following the same path.
There's so much more to my eventual transition. But really, I just wanted to talk about the 'feelings'. That's all I have as an interface to my mental health. I only know the things that I experienced in direct relation to the things that happened in my body.
I can say that now, I do still suffer mental health issues. Obsessive compulsive disorder is a problem for me, including regular intrusive thoughts. But I do not hate myself. At the age of 13, I would frequently, hit, scratch and try to mutilate myself. Now, many years on, I have no such issue. I've had a lengthy amount of time taking hormone replacement, I've had sex reassignment surgery, and I've had facial surgery to remove male features. And.. I'm fine. The self-hatred isn't an issue anymore. It hasn't been for many, many years. I suppose it's the only difference which took me from mentally ill teenager with self-harm tendencies, to just being a relatively docile, comfortable person living, working and enjoying time around friends and family.
All I have access to is feelings. Nothing else. I know that I felt that changing my sexual characteristics would make my life go from constant obsessive thoughts and self-hate, to reliable comfort. And that change gave me that.
Is there another way? Maybe. And if there were, I would strongly advocate it. It's a horrible set of symptoms to suffer from.
But I and many others exist on the other side now, without those mounting mental health issues of before. Perhaps in the future, we will find another way. But I hope for now that people with these thoughts and feelings are greater protected from themselves, because the capacity for self-harm in transsexual people is terrifying.