Moving On

When I was a child I routinely had to walk up the slatted staircase of the church where my family worshipped.  It was a modern design and you could see the floor beneath as you climbed ever higher.  I used to shake with fear.  I hated it.  On a bad day my father would have to carry me.  Yes, I’m scared of heights, I hate looking down and seeing what’s below me.  For someone who’s felt female for the whole of her life but has the wrong body parts, looking down is something you hate doing. That’s been my experience since I was three years old: Before that I can’t remember. When you look down you see that you’re different to every other female you know.  Why was I different to my Mommy? Why was I different to my friend Julie across the road? Why was different to every other girl in the street? It made me feel like a freak.

I came to realise 10 years ago as I came out that I also hate looking back.  Looking back reminded me of having to act a part that was never me, of having to battle through life as a woman with facial hair and the wrong genitalia; filled like poison with the wrong hormones and desperately unhappy.  Looking back was just as painful as looking down and I had an extreme aversion to doing it.  My therapist sought to change all that. He guided me through the process of confronting my past and facing it.  He also encouraged me to write this blog; almost one hundred posts filled with a chronicle of my experiences: Experiences and feelings that I had locked away and needed to face before moving on. Writing the Blog and looking back gave me perspective.

How would you define perspective? A mental attitude or viewpoint? one allowing you to see things in their true proportions and accurately?  That’s how it has been for me anyway and the sense of perspective I shied away from so long has finally lead to a resolution:  12 months on from surgery I’m feeling very different. So much has changed and I’m now in a very different place.  A year ago, everything was quite literally raw and sore; an open wound that had been painful throughout my whole life. If I take the long view and look back I see the same thing over and over, dwindling down until it becomes a distant pinpoint: I see nothing but a girl who was forced to act a part. So where does that leave me?

It leaves me where I am now with a (belated) realisation that I’ve never been anything else; a girl with a difficult beginning in life; an unhappy young woman who did her best to fit in at college and failed; a woman who found solace and fulfilment in motherhood but never fell in love; a woman who found herself in the end and came to realise her dreams; all of these, always female.  If I you want to consider me a T-Girl I’m a natal one.  An NTG if you will.  However, I hate categories and sub-categories.  I’ll just go with what’s on my birth certificate and that’s ‘Girl’. 12 months after GRS I know longer feel Trans.  Gender Dysphoria has long since gone to be replaced by Euphoria.  I’m happy with my female gender as it is. My history may be a little different to most girls but I grew up one and I am one all the same, period.

So that’s it.  This is the point where this particular blog comes to an end and this is the final posting.  I will keep the “Retrobassgirl” Blog up online.  Please feel free to continue to comment and I will respond. In the meantime I’m starting a new one: “Jane’s Essential Addictions” I want to write about where I am now as a woman, as a girlfriend and about the things a girl can’t do without; everything from sex and love to food and fashion.

So here goes :)

Hugs,

Jane xx