Dear Doug & Monika:

I've got a secret that I need to tell you guys since I'll be moving up there, and I hope to be seeing you guys (or at least Monika) pretty often. I'm not exactly the perfect girl that I've been pretending to be.

I mean, I'm still perfect, of course, but I'm not exactly a girl. I'm transgendered, meaning that while my outside is female, my brain is wired like that of a male... and my self-image reflects that.

I know it's a little hard to swallow, especially since, for the last few years, I've been trying to compensate, to be more "normal"... and getting a lot more femme than I'm comfortable with.

In truth, I'm just a guy who, by some trick of nature, was born with the wrong parts. Thankfully, I'm tough. I can deal. (usually).

Anyway... now that I'm moving away from Marianna and being given the opportunity to start over afresh, I'm going to try doing it as myself... as a guy. Tech already knows, and they've been incredibly helpful in working out housing arrangements and such.

I'm not actually any different. It's all really just superficial, so that it's easier to see me the way I feel. So maybe I'll look a little different and be called by another name, but I still like the same things and have the same abilities.. the same personality.

I still want to hang out and do things. Yeah, I know it'll be sort of awkward for you, too.. Among friends.. hey.. Claim I'm my own brother. Or tell them my secret. At least we FtM?'s (female-to-males) are less likely to get killed for our existence than our transgirl counterparts.

The name I picked for myself is "Alexander Nikolai Briggs." I'll change my last name if my family really doesn't want me anymore, but I really don't want to sever those connections. My initials are the same. And my middle name has just been masculinized in a sort of nifty way.

As for Alex... It's just the name that kept haunting me as I was thinking about it. Plus, it's androgynous, which could get me out of tough situations if it had to.

My mom is having a hard time with all of this. I've told her, but I don't know how to help her understand... It's really sort of come between us, which sucks since you know how close we've always been...

I haven't told Terry at all. I'm too afraid he'll laugh at me or yell at me or.. well.. worse. He is sort of homophobic, and too many people associate gender with sexuality. (They really aren't very related at all.)

Mom is very against me trying this in college... but I see this as my best chance in the foreseeable future. I'll be in a city that's fairly trans-friendly (not as much as, say, San Fransisco or Boston, of course), with relatively stable living arrangements (the college).

People at school and in the community will be able to get to know me as me, Alex, making it easier to get a job and things in the future. And medically, if I decide to opt for hormone therapy (I'll need to talk to a counselor and doctors about it first), the younger I start, the better the results and the less the risk of complications.

I'm not an overly macho, masculine guy, but I'm a guy nonetheless, and it's slowly killing me to pretend otherwise. How would Doug feel if he was stuck with breasts and a high voice? With monthly mood fluctuations and (heaven forbid) cramps and bleeding?! And then there's the chance of pregnancy... just the thought drives me insane.

The thing is, with my mom being unsupportive and Terry not knowing, it's really hard for me to try to get things ready to start school as male. I'd like a haircut, and some more clothes (even though I've been wearing a lot of male clothes for.. well... as long as I've been picking out my own clothes)... but I'm afraid of trying to get some of that done here.

I also haven't even told my mom that I've told Tech... which she'll find out eventually, since it's changing my place in the dorms...

Yeah, life as a girl has been fun at times, but I'm sick of lying, sick of acting, and sick of trying to be what I'm not. Maybe it would be better if I got a kick out of dressing in drag, but I don't. So... here's the deal: Instead of a broken, self-loathing adopted niece, I'll give you a mended and more comfortable nephew. Sound okay?

-Alex

Submitted by Xan (6/24/2004)

Note: This page was archived and merged from TSSupport.org.

Categories: ComingOut Letters TSSupport