All names have been changed or censored for privacy reasons. This was originally a Livejournal entry; it has since been edited very slightly for use as a general coming-out letter.

Truth. Not just your average melodrama.

It's a funny thing, that word 'truth'. There are a lot of forms of it, to be sure. I can say "the sky is blue", and it's true because you can look at it and say "Gee, the sky is blue." One level of truth: simple empirical observation.

I can say "It hurts to get punched," and it's true not because it's an observation you can make right now, but because you can think about it and either imagine or remember the sensation of pain, associated with a punch. It's not instantly obvious, but it's not hard to piece together.

But I can also say that night is day, and when you look at me wondering if I have taken leave of my senses, I can explain it. Clearly, on the opposite side of the world, in another time zone, though it's nearly dawn here, it's almost noon somewhere. Eastern Europe, maybe. I'm not exactly sure, but night is day. You just have to be ready to understand it.

I can say that I have been in love. And this is where truth is less obvious than before. You don't know it, except as I say it. I can tell you that I remember being in love, being swept away by a completeness of emotion that I would ride that current to the ends of the earth if that's where it took. I describe it, and I tell you, and you believe me. It's truth, but it's not obvious truth. You have to take some of it on faith.

So I'm going to ask for some faith here, when I say that I have in the last five months come to realize something very important to my identity. I am not a man. Not exactly. I'm not a woman, either, but if we were to toss physicality aside for a heartbeat, that would be much closer to who I am than 'man'.

I am transgendered. I am the old joke; a lesbian in a man's body.

I close my eyes and look in the mirror, and I see a face entirely different from the face I see when they're open. I lie in bed and think about the world and how things should be, and invariably I think that my Y-chromosome is an error. I am a girl, albeit with a 'slight' condition that makes me a genetic male. It's the difference between sex and gender.

I can't explain it, although I can say that this is not new nor uncertain nor the result of insanity.

When I was six, I would lock myself in my mother's closet and think of her clothes. I would look at them and wonder why I wasn't wearing things like them. I didn't really draw a huge distinction between the girls and the boys, aside from the social distinctions everyone else made. So I went along with it. For a long while.

When I was fourteen, I played on a MUD called Melmoth. It was kinda new, and my friends and I were in high school and looking for a new hobby. So we started playing on this new MUD, and I decided to take advantage of the internet's anonymity (oh, the irony) and play a girl character. I called her 'Destiny', and I had fun playing her. However, on Melmoth nobody ever stayed in character. There was no reason to; roleplaying was a joke. So often things turned into just a bunch of dorks from around the country talking via a glorified chatroom. I continued the illusion, and said I was a girl in real life as well. It felt so right, so natural, so me that I couldn't throw it away for anything. I had explaining to do, however, as my high school clique were all playing as well. Any of them could out me as a boy. So I talked to all of them, got them to play along. "As a joke," I said, but it was much more than that to me. I even, at one point, constructed an elaborate backstory to hide my true sex, going so far as to enlist my friend Jim in saying that we were dating.

I stayed a girl on Melmoth for a year and a half, leaving for entirely unrelated reasons. Melmoth became more important to me than real life sometimes, not just because I'm a geek, but also because there I could be me. I could be a girl, and it wasn't a problem.

I was beginning to accept who I was, and I tried once, to reach out. A friend of mine, Dawn, was having a bad day, and I of course chose that day to talk to her. I said that it must be easier to be a girl, that life would be easier if I were a girl. 'Easier', definitely the wrong thing to say. She grabbed her breasts and leaned at me, saying "You think I can just shake these things and get whatever I want?" Her anger compounded my hesitance, and I just closed that idea off for years.

Not entirely, though. I still imagined myself at the fringes of my mind as a girl. I have a distinct memory of, for example, during my first semester at my first university, while I was studying with my first roommate for an anthropology exam, sitting down on my bed with a book and folding my arms across my lap, wearing a sleepshirt much too large for me, just like I saw Willow do on Buffy once - and that comparison was good in my head.

I was nineteen, maybe, when I was living in Maine, and David sat me down. Told me that he was a girl. That he needed to be a girl. I don't remember exactly what it was he said in terms of the words chosen, but I instantly understood what he was talking about. After all, I'd done the same thing years before. Gone through the same feelings, wanted the same things.

It was then, I think, that I remembered how I felt. I watched David go through feelings and emotions and plans and I remembered when I wanted them, and a large part of me lived vicariously through him. I tried to start reaching out to my friends then, but I felt an odd combination of shame and hesitancy, and I stopped. I even told myself that the feelings I had were simply a legacy of the past, mixed with empathy for my friend.

It wasn't fully until my current roommate Andy suggested that I was a woman that I started to even take myself seriously. Like it were a possibility. I started questioning my gender again almost seven months ago. I realized who I am (again) five months ago. I told my parents one month ago. I've been telling a lot of my friends this whole time. And in general, my friends were really awesome about keeping it a secret when I wasn't ready to share it with the world.

There are some things I just know. I know that the sun will come up in the morning, I know that gravity pulls mass together, I know that there are four letters in the genetic alphabet, and I know that when Lincoln spoke of the 'last full measure of devotion', he was talking about the lives of the Union soldiers.

Those things I learned. I was taught.

There is another level of knowledge, one more like gnosis than learning. Innate, instinctual knowledge of truths. I know what I am. I close my eyes, and I see a woman. I feel out my mind, and it doesn't match up nearly to what I imagine a boy mind would feel like.

It's strange, to have this sort of knowledge. It's not a question, just a fact. But then, there are plenty of other facts, ranging from trivial to essential. I know that I like the colors pink and black together. I also know that earth tones bother me in a way I can't really explain. I know what temperature range I prefer to be in; if the environment's more than 80 degrees I'm probably uncomfortable, less than 25 and I probably want a real jacket. And I know what gender I am.

It really is as simple and straightforward as that. It's the rest of it, the history I've had as a boy, the societal expectations, those are all the confusing parts. But I am who I am.

I am lucid. I am rational. I am coherent, and have the capacity for logic. I recognize reality and the physical and social truths of my situation.

Insanity would be claiming all this, being fully open and yet not believing a word of it. Not having the gnosis to back it all up. Because it is a big deal, and it is a major part of my life. It's a goal to work towards.

There are a few basic stages, starting subtle and getting dramatic later on. This is, of course, where the 'wow' begins. The first is, of course, self-acceptance, which includes counseling. For me, that's twinned with weight loss. I'm not going to do this wrong.

The next thing to do is the subtle things, preparation that doesn't interfere with my boy life. Getting rid of the facial hair with electrolysis or lasers is a big first step. Then voice training, because I want to sound feminine. Learning about makeup and fashion and stuff that's just wholly different for guys and girls. Learning posture and mannerisms and things that girls are traditionally raised to know, that boys just don't. Obviously, not every girl walks the same or has a certain posture or set of poses, but there are common threads. I don't want to be easily clocked (trannie term for 'identified as a birth male'). I want to fully pass as a woman. Go 'stealth', is the term. I've no problem being open about who I am, though that may in the future change, but I've certainly no desire to be physically obviously gender-variant for my whole life.

Once I've mastered (or at least, gotten down passably) the fundamentals, I start taking hormones. An androgen blocker, combined with estrogen and other female hormones, will shape my body to be… different. Fat placement will shift. I'll lose the gut and get hips and breasts instead. I'll lose body hair. While that's going on, I'll be visibly gender-variant (though I will minimize that with baggy clothing and taping down of the chest), but that only lasts for a few months.

When I've finally got the body shape of a woman, then I intend to go in for what's called FFS - facial feminization surgery. There are a broad range of subtle distinctions between facial types that allow us to instantly recognize the person's gender. Bone structure, brow lines, cheekbones, nose and chin shape, etc. All that can be fixed. I've seen its results, and it's fantastic how much a face can be changed. Another important early surgery is a trach shave, to get rid of my Adam's apple.

Then, I should be able to pass and live like a woman. At this point, legalities change. Birth certificate, driver's license, all IDs?, credit cards, bank accounts, etc. all need to be put into my new girlname, and gender fixed accordingly. My name right now is [censored], a given name, a relative's name, my mother's family name, and my father's family name. My new name will be Allison. Partly so I can keep my initials, partly because I like the name Allison and it had nobody attached to it when I picked it out. Hannah was the name my mother was going to give me were I born with the double Xs, and my family names will not change. (Unless my family gives me reason to do so, and in all likelihood I'm going to keep them anyway, then. They're my names too.)

The standards of care for transsexuals require that there be a one year real life test, in which a transwoman never drops the role of 'woman' once for a year while maintaining a life - social, job or school, etc. Once that's completed, with counseling and therapy going on all the while, then the "sex change operation" becomes an issue. For me, though, that's so far in the future that I don't even want to think about it. It'll happen eventually, probably, but for now? Yeah, not an issue.

I've been dealing with this for quite a white now. Nearly half a year. And, that's why I've seemingly been posting less; not that I have, it's just mostly been locked away. I'm going to stop that now, because I no longer feel the need to hide who I am. No more secrets. No more lies. No more overcompensation. I vastly prefer to live a life of openness.

I'm not going to pretend I don't have an audience now. I know there are many of you who had no idea that this was going on with me, and I imagine that this is somewhat troubling. I am not a changed person; this is who I am, and who I have always been. I have kept secrets, and while it is not typically my way, it is the way I have approached this issue and I do not apologize.

I am, however, more than willing to talk to any of my friends and acquaintances who are wierded out by this. It is not my intention to parade around, flaunting my differences and demanding that I be treated a certain way. It is, however, my intention, to remain the person that I have always been. And I do not want to lose any friends over this issue, but as may be already perfectly clear: I have no need to apologize for being who I am, though I am fully understanding that this may be difficult to understand for many people. So I am here, for all of my friends and acquaintances who wish to discuss me.

-Allison, going public.

Contributed by Allison (12/14/2004)

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Categories: ComingOut Letters TSSupport