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Sometimes I Can't Hold It In Any More
Joannebarbarella
I suppose I am what you can categorise as a frustrated transsexual. I am not a crossdresser although I dress in women's clothes as often as I can. I don't regard this as crossdressing. All I am doing is dressing in the clothes in which I should have been dressing all my life. Circumstances have prevented me from assuming my true sex throughout my life, so that I have had to masquerade as a man for more than sixty years.
I did have a period in my teens when I was able to live as a girl but the 1960s was a dangerous time for transsexuals (we didn't even have a name for us then) and I chickened out after being beaten shitless a couple of times and did not even keep the photos of myself from that era. I wish I had because I think I looked pretty good but paranoia was the word in those days.
Big Closet saved me from madness and gave me an outlet for my frustrations. I found friends here who understood me, so here I am.
So that's me....like me or loathe me, but I just couldn't keep myself hidden any more.
Comments
The best person anyone in the world can ever be
is themselves. Sometimes it's hard, and sometimes the world might try to tell us we are wrong, or evil, or any number of things, but in the end there's a choice that has to be made:
Do you simply give in, conform to the status quo, and waste away to nothing? Or do you stand up, face down adversity, and tell the world, " Here I am."
Ma'am, you're a pretty cool person. Don't let nobody but no one tell you different.
Melanie E.
Pressure
I think I'm relatively sane, as much as anyone using this site can be, but occasionally the pressure gets too much and there is no alternative but to let the world see who I am. I like me and just wish society would let me be me all the time. I'm not trying to do anybody else any harm. Thanks for the nice comment.
A very attractive lady
Joanne, you are a very nice looking lady. I'd take you to lunch and be damn proud to do it. My only regret would be there are no theaters or really any places for entertainment, in my part of the world. I don't think the bars are any place to take a lady for an evening so that's out.
My heart feels for you. Make the most of it as you obviously have. I pray you find that elusive happiness.
hugs hon
always,
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
I'd Go To Lunch With You
Anytime! Or even a bar, as long as it was a nice bar. The theatre or a cinema....no problem at all.
Living the lie
I understand just where you're coming from. I lived the lie for more years, make that decades, than I care to remember. I was nine when I discovered my feminine nature. I'm sure that it was there before, but as I was told I was a boy, I never looked for it. That would have been in 1954. I had no clue that I wasn't the only boy in the world that just couldn't keep from wearing girls clothes every chance he got. I knew I was strange... not normal... that there was something wrong with me. Just like an alcoholic, I told myself I could quit and walk away anytime I wanted to... I just didn't want to. Surely when I got married I'd not need this anymore. (That lasted almost a year.)
I was totally closeted and without a clue as to my true nature until I saw the movie Psycho. In the final scene the word transvestite popped up. That prompted a trip to the library (no internet to search back then.) I finally found out that I wasn't alone. Though, my mind was poisoned... I couldn't be anything but a cross-dresser. I told myself that lie and believe it until fifteen years ago. I was then I began to interact with others like me in real time and discovered the truth about myself.
My wife discovered me dress in 1960. It was then I admitted that I couldn't walk away, that this was ingrained in my psyche. (The sure cure didn't work.) I then had to deal with it. Even after I realized I was transgendered (a new word discovered in the late nineties,) I still hung on to that cross-dresser myth. But slowly I came to realize, in stages, that, while cross-dressing is a part of trans, that wasn't the station my train stopped at. I spent some time in the androgyny camp. That label became uncomfortable. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that began to suspect there was something more.
Long story short, I started on HRT a year and a half ago. At this late stage in my life, I'll probably never fully transition, but at last I'm being I honest with myself, my wife and most of my family about not fitting into that box the doctor put me in, 73 years ago, when he said, "It's a boy." The true me is now allowed to exhibit herself when ever (including public places) she wants, which is most of the time.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Parallel Lives
I'm just a couple of years older than you (I think) but I also dicovered that I was really a girl when I was about nine or ten. In those days, which kids knew? I can remember being jealous of some of the girls at school because they got to wear such pretty clothes, but everybody said I was a boy and I believed them.
It took two things to open my mind. One seems really stupid now. The cereal that I ate at the time had a series of cut-out cardboard masks on the boxes, like cowboys, firemen and pirates. Two of the options were a princess and a fairy. I couldn't stop wearing them (only when my parents were not around). I just thought I looked much better as a girl than as a boy and somehow they reached into my soul. The other was the movie "Some Like It Hot". I went to see it with a girlfriend and afterwards she made me up, saying I would look better than Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis and she was right. I did, and I nearly passed out. Already in my heart I knew that I was a girl and that confirmed it. I moved in with her and she delighted in feminising me for the next year and more until real life got the better of me. Looking back, I should have married her.
Like you I got married (to a different girl) a few years later and tried to carry on a "normal" life but I could not give up my addiction to wearing female clothes. I did try to "come out" to my wife but the very thought disgusted her and I got all the usual "are you queer? You're a pervert," stuff so I went back into my closet for fear, family and peace and quiet.
The internet eventually let me know that I wasn't alone and I actually discovered Big Closet a little over ten years ago and never looked back. I still can't come totally out for family reasons but now I can exhibit myself in public occasionally and enjoy the experience with some few friends.
I feel so liberated.
My story was similar to yours
Except I stayed hidden most of my life I was 50 before I figured out I was trans Before that I don't want to say what i thought of myself. Never did come out to my parents before they died (not sure if I could ever been strong enough for that.
I finally did
When I was 35, I finally came out to my dad. I just put on some black women's slacks, a blouse with an ascot collar, cap sleeves and a pullover sleeveless turquoise sweater and pair of kitten heel sling backs; drove over and knocked on his door. He looked me up and down. Invited me in and we had our normal visit. He never said anything about how I was dressed. He didn't seem surprised at all. He didn't blink the next time I showed up in heels and a dress. He lived in an apartment and his porch overlooked the parking lot. He noticed my car wasn't in the parking lot; I'd opted to park on the street and was only a half a block from his door, rather than park in the lot and probably have to walk nearly a full block up hill. When I told him I was parked on the street, he said, "You can park in the lot." It was like saying, it didn't matter to him that his neighbors might see me. All in all, I wish I'd come out a long time ago, perhaps when I was in my teens.
That was the inspiration for "Jamie Finds Acceptance."
If you'd like to find out more about my dad and why he wasn't surprised about my dressing, I've detailed it in my autobiographical piece, "Silence is Golden."
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
I'm Like You
I was never game to come out to my parents. I'm sure my Dad would have killed me....not that he was a bad man but he was a product of his times.
Life
I am 60. Not a looker, nor lucky in my history, but I went through my own transition more than a few years ago. I just get on with my life, living as myself. Those here who have met me can testify to that. I haven't worn trousers for some months because of a leg injury, so I am constantly in a skirt or a dress. I get the occasional problem, but I was warned by my original gender therapist that once someone is over a certain age, they are generally ignored, as people focus on those they might want to mate with. He was right. I am a dumpy old woman who rarely wears heels because they are awkward, who just gets on with her life.
And who gets misgendered so very rarely it actually comes as a shock!
You And I Have Talked
You are 16 years younger than me. When I first began dressing in England it was still illegal. I was lucky never to get caught or "clocked" by the police. Times are somewhat better now and I hope that you are able to live your life without hassle. In the case of people like us the ignorance of others is definitely bliss.
I can still wear heels but I used to be able to manage 4 inches....not any longer....I can only do 2 inch to 3 inch now and at three I get wobbly!
You're you
I've tried umpteen times to write something here that sums everything up, but t keeps going horribly wrong. So I'm just going to say that I think you're wonderful anyway - whatever you choose to be.
I'm not bad, I just can't find the words...
An Old Friend
Not in the sense of being ancient. Nick is some twenty years younger than me and would you believe we went to the same school, but he was a kind of guru to me when I came to BC, much more proficient in writing and if you take the time you can see that his works still resonate today.
Nick, thank you for the kind words. Maybe I had a moment of insanity in coming out but the pressure does get to you.
I am sure that you will find your way to writing here again and we will once again enjoy your stories.