A very curious thing happened this morning, which kind of has me in a panic. I looked at my breasts in the mirror, and for a moment, found myself hating them.

That very well could be a danger sign, a sign that deep down, I want to de-transition, which understandably has not had a very good effect on my mood. De-transitioning is the last thing in the world I want, especially after fourteen years of living as female. And the feeling is not constant, just on certain days. So what's going on?

I have my theories as to why I felt the way I did, and I do hope I'm right. It could be that they're an obvious physical sign of my transition, and a reminder that I gave up a lot to get those things. When I came out to my family in 1998, they naturally did not take it well, to the point I felt they were embarrassed by me, and it would be better for me to move elsewhere. That way, I could avoid awkward moments like having one of my mom's friends say, "Aren't you __________'s son? What the hell have you done to yourself? Further, why would you put your mother through this?"

So I left, moving to another state to put some distance between my family and me. Little did I know that would come back to haunt me years later.

As most of you probably know by now, my mom died this year. It was rapid, sudden, and completely unexpected, and I had no time at all to prepare myself psychologically. It occurred to me that only a couple of weeks before, I said to myself, "You know, Mom's getting up in years. She might be around for what--ten, fifteen years more? I really should see her this year before it's too late...." Indeed, she had talked about coming this Christmas, and I'd already made the rounds of the local hotels, inquiring about rates for the holidays. But it was not to be.

You see, she was starting to get used to the idea that I was now Rachel, and even sent me a birthday card with the following words emblazoned on it: BIRTHDAY GIRL. On the front was a picture of two girlfriends, gabbing over coffee. She was coming around. A whole new relationship between us seemed possible--I could finally have the true mother-daughter bond with her I'd so long desired. But that was not to be, either.

Now she was gone, and I realized how many years with her I lost so I could pursue this transition. To chase a fantasy, as I thought at the time.

For about six of my twelve years here, we kept in constant contact by phone and e-mail. Whenever we talked I knew to clear my afternoon schedule, because we'd be on the phone for hours. She had a marvelous, often wicked sense of humor, and we'd be forever making funny remarks back and forth.

But now she was gone, and I found myself feeling extremely guilty. It worsened a depression that had already been underway for a couple of months, ironically because of a story I read here on this site. I won't upset the person who wrote it by mentioning which story--ANY one of them could have triggered it--but suffice to say it had the typical "reveal" scene, in which the main character sees herself as female for the first time. The following thought popped in my head, "I hope she doesn't regret what she's doing...."

I panicked, since that indicated that deep down, I DID regret what I'd done, and if so, I'd have no choice but to de-transition. But I didn't want to de-transition, because I'd been Rachel for so many years, and there were things I liked about being a woman. And thus it's been for the past year or so--the constant push-pull between a mental voice telling me I'm a fraud and should de-transition, and another voice telling me I should stay as I am.

Now bear in mind that up to that moment, I was had been happy--euphoric, even--about my transition, and felt better than I ever had. I felt more confident than I ever had--I even started signing my e-mails to my mother "Rachel"--before that, I just typed in, "until later..." without using any name at all, because I did not want to provoke an argument. But in five seconds, the depression bore down on me like a lead weight, and I've been trying to dig my way out from under it for the past year.

The thoughts usually hit me at night when I'd try to sleep, and I'd immediately suffer panic attacks. It got to where I'd be afraid to sleep, and would stay up till all hours, which did not have a positive effect on my health. The panic attacks have subsided and the negative mental voice has retreated to the background, but it still surfaces every now and then.

Mom was adamant that I showed NO outward sign whatever of femininity--I didn't like dolls or stuffed animals, she said, and that I liked "male-directed" things (though she did not specify what those things were).

That led me to try to mentally search back to see if she was indeed right. If I had PROOF I was legitimate, perhaps I'd feel better about my transition. I read constantly about transpeople who say, "Oh, I knew when I was three...when I was four...when I was six..." and so on. But did I?

The fact is, I have scant evidence, if any at all. I have no way of remembering exactly how I thought at five or six years old. So I would go looking for even the smallest indications of gendered behavior, and put each in a "boy" or "girl" column.

GIRL: Despite what Mom said, I did like dolls, and had one from the time I was two. It was a boy doll, though, called "Chatty Brother" (the boy counterpart to "Chatty Cathy".) And I swear I remember a picture of me taken at two, in which I'm holding a girl doll. And as for stuffed animals, I did have one I was attached to--two, actually, but I didn't have that long. I had a stuffed kitty from the time I was about eighteen months old until I was eight years old, and I lost it (or, more likely, my parents got rid of it and made me think it was lost--I can't be sure). I also had a stuffed bunny at three that my baby cousin ruined by spitting up on. (Never quite forgave him for that). =)

BOY: I didn't play with the doll in a stereotypically girlish way, however. It was more like an ersatz little brother than my "baby", and I used to play "newscaster" with it. I'm dating myself here, but when I was six, the Huntley-Brinkley Report was a fixture on television. I didn't understand what was being said, for the most part, unless mom explained it to me in little-kid terms, but I liked the interplay between the two anchors.

So I would be a newscaster and Chatty Brother would be my "co-anchor." I'd pretend we were on camera, and I'd "read" some story I made up (I'd hold a blank piece of paper). Not something I'd picture a girl doing with her doll in the late-sixties Deep South. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is unlikely.

GIRL: I had traditional "boy" toys--cars, G.I. Joe figures--but I didn't play with them much. I did like building toys--I had a set with Lego-like plastic bricks, plastic windows and doors, and a cardboard roof that enabled me to design and build my own little houses. Probably on the "Boy" side, but I could have been attracted to the creative aspect of it, so it could have been more a girl thing.

I did like artistic things like Light-Brite and Spirograph, but a boy could too, so I have to probably put that in an "ambiguous" category.

VERY HEAVILY "GIRL": I wanted to have curly hair, and at five, I even tried putting my mom's curlers in my it, only to be frustrated because my hair was too short. I stopped when Mom teased me about it. I got in the habit of twisting my hair around my finger in a futile effort to make it curly, a habit I didn't break until I was a young adult. I can't imagine most boys that age doing that.

BOY: I never asked for a dress--in part because I knew what the answer would be, and partly because I knew I'd be teased for it. If someone had asked me at say, six, what gender I was, I would have said "boy" unequivocally. Did I not say "girl" because I was a boy, or because everybody told me I was a boy and the idea of "girl brain, boy body" was beyond me? I don't know.

I never had the chance to cross-dress, really, because I didn't know how to dress myself until I was eight. And once I did, most female clothes would probably have proved frustrating to try to get on (they were later, after I was already an adult).

GIRL: In my teens, though, I would crochet long yarn hair bows out of chain stitches and tie my hair in pigtails with them, and stuff socks in my shirt. (I learned to crochet at sixteen because my mom was a crochet enthusiast--hey, it was the seventies...) That's about as far as I went. Inevitably, my brother would burst through the door, and up would fly my hands to cover the pigtails. I never knew if he noticed the socks in my shirt.

GIRL: I loved books with girl protagonists--Trixie Belden was one (a sort of 'tween Nancy Drew) and my favorite book at age eleven was one called "The Secret Language" by Ursula LeGuinn. It concerned a little girl named Victoria, a shy new student in a girls' boarding school. She meets and befriends the standard-issue "quirky kid", Martha, who has her own private language--the "secret language" of the title. The only word I can remember now is "leebossa", which meant something on the order of "fantastic." In retrospect I realized something--when I read, I imagine myself as the main character in my stories. So in my mind, I WAS Victoria! That was the "a-ha" moment, I think, that I realized there was something different about me. There was something about "girlness", some indefinable thing that appealed to me in that story, that stuck with me.

At any rate, it was NOT a boy's book. I can remember my mom saying, when she ordered it through Scholastic Book Club (remember that?), "Do you really want THAT book??" I really remember catching hell from the other kids about it. I really had no clue I wasn't supposed to like it, which tells me that left to my own devices, I probably would have gravitated toward girl stuff.

BOY: I loved suits and ties for a while at the ages of eight through ten. I think because they made me feel like an adult, and hated being a child. But the undeniable fact is I had latched onto and almost fetishized items of male clothing. But is that an indication of a male identity? At any rate, whether it was or not, that faded quickly, particularly when I realized just how uncomfortable ties were.

GIRL: An overwhelming number of my friends growing up (what few I had, anyway) were girls. I just felt more comfortable around them, since I thought boys were gross, loud, and pushy. But mostly gross. I'd more likely be with the girls as they were playing hopscotch (I even tried it, but the crutches prevented me from really doing it the right way).

BOY: It could have been that being disabled, the only reason girls tolerated me is that I as a disabled child awakened a nurturing instinct in them (this is an actual theory that's been proposed regarding disabled kids and friendships) and my disability locked me out of the competitive world of boys. So I didn't associate with them.

So, there you have it. I will never know for sure, and there is nobody living that can offer me a clear picture of how I was as a child. But the future of my transition depends on my being able to find an answer.

And yes, yes, I know that all of the behaviors of which I wrote were stereotypical, so please, please go easy on me. I felt I had to go with the most obvious, unambiguous examples of "boy" or "girl" behavior, and those are the most stereotypical ones. After all, that's the standard my mother used in assessing my behavior, so I've spent years trying to gather counter-examples that were just as unambiguously female. Problem is, it's something that's no longer relevant since my mother is gone--I have no reason to "prove" anything to her anymore. But I do feel a need to prove it to myself.