I'm not really much of a people person. I kinda had to grow up that way to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of childhood. It's made me not much of a social butterfly and quite awkward in social interactions even though time has rubbed some of those rough edges off. However, the wounds still remain and the scabs over them never quite heal properly leaving their scars behind, not quite visible to most though the pain never completely goes away. That saying that time heals all wounds? Hmm..... There may be something there. Maybe not. Time will tell.

There are those who would say that I'm not old yet. I'm not young either. I went through my childhood and teenage years with my many questions and anguish about myself and my gender identity. I didn't have the resources available that abound now. I had a dictionary. I was lucky there. It helped at the time. Anywho, maybe like one of these many works of fiction, after years of struggling, I had been living my life and found someone who accepted me and helped me in fulfilling part of my journey in life. Unlike many of these stories, my stay in the hospital was not the end, simply a means to give me the peace of mind to continue.

When we are younger, we really think we have all the time in the world to accomplish our goals, our dreams. What happens when you have a feeling that your dreams have been achieved, yet time moves on? In my younger life I had feelings of isolation and wrongfulness. What is learned behavior in our formative years is hard to undo. It takes quite a lot of effort and energy and personal fortitude to overcome what is ingrained into growing minds. There are things that we instinctively know from birth due to genetics or biochemistry or gestation in the womb. Then there are the things we learn from those around us who guide us in our lives as we grow. Gender Identity is just one corner of a large puzzle, though it is a cornerstone that affects the rest.

You may wonder why I am going on about this. You may even have stopped reading at this point. I don't blame you. I probably would too. It's always been hard for me to communicate with others. As I said before, I'm not really a people person. I never really knew how to be. I tend to keep to myself and shy away from most. It is hard for me to trust others. I had some big secrets growing up. I loved my parents and trusted them to raise me. I knew they were trying the best they could to do so, even though it was not an absolute garden variety healthy environment to grow up in. I knew also that I had to betray the beliefs that they had in me in order to live the life that I had to live in order to be myself. My father never understood why I had to shatter his vision of how my life was supposed to be in his views. It was a couple of decades, close to his deathbed at the time, before he really started to realize how I saw him truly in my eyes as daddy's little girl all those years before trying to reach out to him just to be hugged and protected, only for time to have reversed our roles with me to be the one protecting him as we had gotten on in our years.

Now as the years have gone by, I find my mother in a similar role with me being the dutiful daughter patiently listening to her mother as she remembers and recollects her years. I forgave my parents long ago. I never really blamed them for my childhood, even though my mother blames herself. I keep having to tell her not to though it doesn't do much good. I know they did the best they could at the time. They didn't know any better than I did at the time. If I didn't know myself all that well, how should I have expected them to know?

Over the years I have made my own attempts to reach out to others in my brief attempts at forming relationships, mostly through this now VERY commonplace thing we call the internet. I was quite standoffish at first. I had been a old hand with computers for many years, but that didn't make me a genius with them or sociable through them. I stumbled my way through the internet and fell onto a few obscure sites at the time with TG Fiction on them, which was really more of a connection of interest as opposed to a reading pleasure. A lot of it wasn't really my cup of tea, though there were quite a few that were diamonds, at least to me. After a while, and with a bit of time on my hands and some efforts and coddling (more like "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!" from Ellen.), I reached out to others online in my efforts to connect and give something of myself, thus became 'Beverly's Balcony'. You may have heard of it. It kinda stayed around for awhile. It helped for a time with my personal issues and gave me something of a connection to people and a boost of confidence and motivation. I REALLY want to thank any and EVERYONE who supported me over the years who came and visited and enjoyed the site while it was active and alive. It did really help at the time. Sadly, as with anything, it's time came and went due to personal and financial reasons. I want to personally thank Erin and those here who had taken over the hosting and displaying of my defunk site over the last several years.

Wow. 16 years already. It was 16 years ago I started Beverly's Balcony. I forget when Erin opened Big Closet but it was close to that time as well and I am very thankful that it has survived and prospered after all these years and will continue to do so for many more. It all comes down to you. This site is a place to visit that is a haven that connects all of us that can't be found anywhere else. It is place that many have come to find a little piece of what we all need in our lives....hope. Maybe it is hope in the belief that one of the stories you read may come true. May it is in the hope that what you have put down on this site that you have written will be read by others and their response will make you want to write more and fulfill you with joy. Maybe it is the hope that you are not alone in your journey in self identification and that you will make a connection with someone else like yourself. Maybe it is hope that will find something in the information that is given by someone on this site that will guide you to where you need to go find help near where you live, so you can go on and prosper in your life. And maybe this site gives Erin and Piper and the others hope that what they are giving of themselves is worth the time and effort in their lives to make ours better.

Whew!. I really don't know where that all came from and I don't even know if you are still reading, but I know that having taken the time to put this down, to you, has helped me.... at least this time.

Beverly Colleen