Submitted by Karen Ann (6/19/2004)
I am a 57-year-old transgendered person. I have felt, since I was 6-7 that I should really have been born a girl. Had more girls as just friends while growing up and little if any interest in sports, competition, etc. Looking back, I believe that my mother secretly wished I were a girl. I remember her buying me dolls, helping make clothes for them. She taught me to knit, sew, crochet, and cook. My first crossdressing experiences began when I was 8, just around the house. One Halloween, it was my mom's idea that I go out as a girl. She had quite a time making me up.
To add greatly to the existing confusion, due possibly to drugs I was taking to treat a blood disorder (purpura), my puberty did not progress as designed. I started to develop secondary female characteristics, hips, breast development, etc. During high school, these combined conditions spared me from having to take gym, probably saving me from untold ridicule and beatings. I was a 36B and undressing in the boys locker room would have been a death sentence. By my junior year I was beginning to see some hip development also. On a number of occasions I was mistaken for a girl at first glance. I was "miss'ed" or "mam'ed" every time I made a phone call. By this time I was crossdressing as much as possible and had begun to go out dressed on occasion. Then a doctor convinced my parents that I should be 'cured'. I have to admit that I was talked into it, I was going to be ‘normal'. I began taking testosterone and it had the expected effects of lowering my voice, etc. Within two years I was crossdressing again in college, a little more difficult to pass but not bad. I would spend a few days a month enfemme on campus. This is when I should have acted but didn't, TS procedures were very rare in the early 60's.
After college there was a period of overcompensation. Acting the macho role, met a girl, got married... this was going to cure me... no. My wife encouraged me to have reduction mamoplasty. I did and I curse the day that I did. I don't hate my wife for it; it was my ultimate decision. After a few years I realized that I hadn't really changed. During the 80's, I had a consulting job and worked out of the house, my wife worked full time. I began to dress two or three times a week going out quite often. When my wife went away on a business trip I would live for a week as Karen. She eventually caught me. The marriage nearly broke up but we came to an uneasy truce. Basically, she didn't want to know about it. The only other person I have told (outside of semi-anonymous people on the Internet who really do not know who I am) is my sister. She was surprisingly supportive. Because of my love for my wife, my inability to sadden my parents and now my age, I have not perused reassignment. Lately, to my surprise, my wife has begun to talk to me about it and while not supportive is much more understanding. I continue to dress and pass in public to this day. Sometimes these are the only happy times in my life.
Life has become a day to day challenge that I handle day by day. I wish I could go back to that time long ago, still vivid in my memory, when the decision was made to cure me. With added wisdom and courage I would shout, "STOP! You don't understand I really am a girl! I want to complete what nature has started."
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" -John Greenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller"
".....Try not to think about what might have been, 'cause that was then, and we have taken different roads.....We can't go back again, there's no use givin' in.....There's no way to know.....WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.."
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