I have told people before that I write to help me cope with what I am. A trans woman in self-denial too scared to come out. I don't feel it as strong as many of you ladied. I just feel I would lose so much if I did.
I have never considered suicide, well not for that. Depression nearly drove me to it, partly due to gender issues.
I don't really hate my male life or body. I would just strongly prefer not to be male. A few day away as Leeanna does wonders for me. That and writing. It allows me to mentally escape. That and chatting to you lovely people on here. You have got to tough to put up with the crap you trans ladies have to.
I have moaned about dislike for Literotica before and took all my stories off. I had lots of emails from followers asking me to post again. I was shocked by the reaction to Seven Years A Wife. Over 50 comments, nearly all positive and just under 39,000 reeads. I got his from someone yesterday.
You and Sabrina are my two favorite authors right now.Thank you for writing and sharing. Reading these stories is part of my therapy. You don't know what good you are doing for some of us. Thanks.
I have never considered anyone reading my stories as therapy. She was refering to Surgeons' Lodger.
Do any other writers find writing helps them cope? or am I an oddball?
Comments
I don't know about 'therapy', but ...
I don't know if it's exactly therapy, but there are a number of stories here that I read and reread when I'm feeling at my worst and wishing I had never been born, and they make me feel better somehow.
Most of the stories I have written have been in one way or another my attempts to deal with various things in my life. For example, I think my story Melanie's Story was my way of processing the realization that I was trans. And there's one story (which I will never publish) that I call "my alternate childhood," which was my attempt to heal from the scars of my growing up. The writing has been slow going because my healing is slow going. (I compare it to having been thrown overboard in the middle of the Atlantic and trying to swim home and not drown. Particularly tough when there's a storm..)
Each of us are different
and write for different reasons.
Mine was to get my brain back in order after suffering with Hairy Cell Leukaemia and the subsequent chemo. my brain was mush and could not concentrate for more than a few minutes.
My consultant suggested writing as a therapy. I'd dabbled in it a bit about 10 years before but it was pretty bad. So I set to and tried.
Not only did it help my brain get back in working order but I found that I enjoyed it.
I consider it a great therapy.
Samantha
I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty
Three things have helped me cope with being trans:
1.) Reading the stories. This has helped for decades including the early times when I had to rent a P.O. Box under a fake business name to receive Sandy Thomas books anonymously.
2.) Writing stories. The process of writing demands that you be in the heads of all the characters, as well as in your readers’ heads at the same time. You need to know what they’re thinking and why. It is amazing how much self-discovery occurs.
3.) Realizing that trans people are not crazy. By getting to know many of those who are on BC I’ve come to know that they’re just ordinary people trying to get through the day. Almost all carry emotional scars from guilt and trauma. That doesn’t make them any more peculiar than abuse victims, those with acute phobias, or those suffering from other traumas.
When I first started reading Trans fiction, I was thirsty for knowledge. The amount of actual information about trans people was scant. When the internet opened in the early nineties with chatrooms and access to Trans fiction it was AMAZING.
The first fifteen years on the internet, I was victimized by the prevailing attitude on two other sites I wrote for, and a bit on BC, that it was okay to be trans – ONLY if you were working toward the admirable goal of full transition. It took me until somewhere around 2005 to realize that being Trans is about the same thing as being right-handed. It’s a bit of a preference, but mostly it’s just me being me.
I understand why some of the women on BC think that cross-dressing is a fetish. They have suffered greatly to achieve their transition and if they hadn’t been totally committed to their goal, they would not have made it.
My goal is, and always has been, to feel good in my own skin. I achieve this by cross-dressing. I wear feminine clothing most of the time, have long hair that I mostly wear out of ponytail, shave my body at least four to five times a week, and always wear a scent. My closets and drawers are filled with at least twice as many feminine articles than male.
However, I know that full transition is not for me.
Coming to that conclusion has largely been done through writing, reading, and getting to know people on BC. I’m not sure that’s therapeutic, but it has been positive for me.
I thank Erin almost every day for the peace she helped bring to my life.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I Feel Petty, Oh So Petty
"Realizing that trans people are not crazy". You can only say that with a straight face because I haven't posted that much lately.
On the other hand I'm not really trans other than in the sense that I quite happily transcend arbitrary societal gender norms, that change over time and place to boot. (Just look at the skirted roman legionaries.)
You're Not Crazy, You're Just Drawn That Way
You and Jessica.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Oh hell Angela, you just made
Oh hell Angela, you just made me realize I'm not the only one like me. I agree with so much that you have said.
The process of writing demands that you be in the heads of all the characters, as well as in your readers’ heads at the same time. You need to know what they’re thinking and why. It is amazing how much self-discovery occurs.
I was balling my eyes out writing some chapters of Surgeon's Lodger. I posted bits of it on a contact site that normally has badly spelt sex stories. Didn't get a big audience but had 3 guys ask me for the rest. I sent them here. Two of them told me it made them cry. Didn't expect guys to admit that.
I would love to live full-time, but know how much harder my life would be. I may regret not doing it someday, but I'm chicken. I have been told by a number of trans ladies I should. The Cat Stevens song, Father and Son comes to mind.
All the times that I've cried
Keeping all the things I knew inside
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it
If they were right I'd agree
But it's them they know, not me
To me it's like being on a rough sea in a sturdy boat, I'm invited onto a flimsy boat that may sink, but I can be who I want be. I chose to stay.
A lot depands on individual circumstances. I made a promise when I married. I will keep it. If my wife went before me, then perhaps...
Leeanna
There is only one piece of advice...
... that I would ever give to anyone about whether they should transition, and that is - ignore all advice from anyone else. It is about as big and as personal a decision as anyone can take, almost as drastic as suicide, and it is only yours to make. There _will_ be a price to pay, and you won't know what that price is until it happens.
In answer to your original question, my mother accepted my decision - not because she agreed with it, but because she loves me. My father wouldn't see me or speak to me for 5 years, and only backed down then because the worry and hurt my mother felt seeing her family torn apart was making her ill. He backed down for her, not for me. I transitioned more than 30 years ago, and for the 25 years after he backed down he _never_ spoke about my transition to anyone, including my mother. That left me with several *interesting* conversations with his friends and my family on his side after he died last year as they believed that he was *estranged* from his only "son" since 1990. For those 25 years he seemed to be fully accepting, and was certainly grateful enough that I was helping both of them over the last two years, particularly as the cancer which eventually killed him started to affect him. It was all very strange in so many ways, and in some ways it all got bad again after he died and I started to find out more.
My sister and her family got used to it in time, and are now completely fine with me - but her father in law and I were never put in the same place as each other because he was utterly intolerant and couldn't have been even minimally polite, or even just ignored me. He was ex-police and my father was ex-army. There's a surprise, not!
oops
thought I was answering your earlier blog post about family acceptance...
Oh well :)
I realized that. No problem.
I realized that. No problem. Thanks for answering that.
Leeanna
I was encouraged to write as part of therapy
and I believe it has helped me a lot..
what I never expected was people telling me reading my stuff helped them, but that's happened a few times.
Writing is therapy
Reading, writing and interacting with like minded people is therapy.
Much of my early work was what I called "could have, should have been" stories. All of them were based on some part of my life where I either let an opportunity slide by, or where some situation presented itself an I longed to have been able to handle it differently. "Girls Aren't So Yukky After All", "A TV's Dream", "Jamie Finds Acceptance" and Tight Money are all prime examples. My very first story I ever published anywhere was "Allen Through the Looking Glass". I sold the copyright to Reluctant Press and they renamed it "Looking Glass Girl". I don't advertise it much because it was a pretty crude effort. I'd advise buying it only if you want to see just how much my writing skills have improved. ;o)
If you follow the link to Reluctant Press, you'll see that I have three stories there. "Why" and "Looking Glass Girl were published there years ago. The recent one, "A Small Protest" was written in order to get the right to publish "Why" elsewhere, since I sold the copyright. It's a much better story and I would be happy to have anyone read it. I don't much like the cover they've chosen. I sent them a cover for it that they chose not to use. Here's what it looked like.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
A Small Protest
I'd seek out the book with the original cover. The one they did, I wouldn't bother.
I don't like their cover at all.
It didn't speak to the storyline at all. They have this thing for hand drawn covers that just don't cut it. I think they are stuck in the past when getting TG fiction was ify at best. In that day it was $10 a pop for short saddle stitched books through the mail. I didn't like the cover for "Why" when they did it back then. It was before BC existed.
When I got the right to publish "Why", I did another cover for it. I've donated "Why" to Erin. I'm not sure what she did with it.
Here's the cover.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Why the question mark?
Of course writing is therapy. Creating anything that is reflective of the issues you face, is cathartic.
For me I am no late comer to my condition - I have know it since I was a small child. I went as far as a could in my pretty youth, but life steered me into a rat race so I became a rat.
I happened upon TG fiction and I read a bit, but it was not enough. People say that I am a storyteller by nature, but I really had never written fiction until a few years ago when I sat down and wrote my first TG story. I just checked - that was July 2017 - less than 5 years ago. I posted it on Fictionmania in November 2017.
Ever since then, these stories have just erupted out of me. It works for me, and I hope it works for others who read me.
I often say that I prefer happy ending and I always steer away from magic and fantasy because I like my readers to think that it might just happen the way I tell it. I like to think that reading my stories is therapy too.
I think that is also a good reason to keep them short - a 15-20 minute therapy session.
But the surprising thing for me has been exchanges like in this blog thread - real people and community that I can feel a part of.
Thanks to you all.
This is therapy. No question.
Maryanne
I think writing does make you
I think writing does make you look at situations from all angles. Some stories have made me consider other opinions.
I do understand some of anti trans opinions, even if I don't agree with it.
I wondered what I would have done if my wife bound he breasts wore a false beard and demanded I call her Bernard.
Probably would have said fine if I can be a stay at home housewife.
Joking aside. It did surprise me being told something I'd written helped someone.
Leeanna
Writing Rough Drafts
My rough drafts are very mean and even perverted, and almost none of them get out of my Word file unscathed. I read and write stories for BCTS almost exclusively and only go to Literotica if BCTS is in a dry spell. The happy thing is that I am MtF post op and in the last two years my orgasmic sexual response has stopped completely. Good Riddance!
I live alone, and am not going to have an intimate partner, male or female. I'm sure of it. Having said that, I have seen very masculine men that make the fog roll out of my head. Disappointingly, none of them have put their moves on me. As to Women, I like nice round butts. I do not understand why women seem to smile, roll their eyes and laugh almost constantly. That may not be the reality of it.
I have nice little B cup breasts but because of illness, my Lymph nodes hurt like hell at the slightest pressure. I have almost no body hair save for my private areas and face. So I shave up handily. I'm 75. I am about to go out so will cover up like a Muslim woman. It has worked very well as cam·ou·flage.
Best to you.
Khadigah Gwen
I put a comment on here
and it disappeared. So I won't be commenting on blogs anymore.
Angharad
Sure it was this blog?
You did comment on Leeanna's other recent blog post about "coming out", which I read and is still there. I got mixed up with the two posts and replied to the wrong one, which is why I was rabbiting on about family acceptance on this thread. Easily done...
Alison
I didn't disappear it
I have not removed any comments except duplicates in a week or two.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
In which case I apologise
and withdraw my remark, but I have no idea where it went.
It was too long to try and recreate other than to say, I write because I have a compulsion to do so, this place is wonderful insofar as it enables me to share my compulsion and from the messages, I get fairly regularly, some readers have found my scribbles helpful, which is a good incentive to continue. They also appear to be helping to fund the site, which is also important.
Angharad
Angharad, I notice my
Angharad, I notice my comments don't appear too. Then I realized that I was just doing the preview and forgetting to save. It's the 2 stage process that keeps catching me out. I've done it lots. I'm a wally LOL
Leeanna
Therapeutic writing
I was in college 1985 to 1991. Every semester someone (or several someone’s) would write a major paper working out a traumatic life experience. The therapy of writing seems universal.
BAK 0.25tspgirl
I'm glad it's not just me. I
I'm glad it's not just me. I know I'm odd. When most of us that started early, pre-internet must have thought we were the only ones in the world who thought we were in the wrong body. I honestly was ashamed of myself. I thought I was a sick freak.
Leeanna