This is going to be long and about as dry as day old toast, but I felt like rambling to complete strangers on the internet for awhile :)

I feel like I need to introduce myself in order to put what sparked all this into a proper context, so skip to the last paragraph if you just want to find the meat (Meat, bread. Hehe. I made a funny.)

It's 1 am the day after christmas, muggy and humid, with rain pouring down, and I find myself in the mood to pour my heart out such as I haven't experienced in a very long time, which is funny because in my day-to-day life, I have trouble getting two words out when I talk to someone I haven't known since I was three, and even some family that I only see once every couple of years, but as Zoe, a name I recently picked up after realizing how much it suited the real me, buried beneath all the excess baggage, I could talk all day about anything and everything.

I used to love writing; poetry, short stories, and even the occasional song, but you wouldn't know it looking from the outside. I was and am, as a male, a poor excuse. I'm legally blind - that is, I'm severely nearsighted but still "with sight", and after about eight surgeries to prevent permanent vision loss due to retinal deterioration, I sometimes wonder if the only reason I cringed at just the thought of transition is because I've already been under a knife enough to last two lifetimes.

I don't write that to garner sympathy though. It's just me trying to provide honest pieces of the puzzle, mostly for myself.

Back in high school (class of 1999) I was your typical socially awkward shy kid. I was terrible at sports, which was just as well because I wasn't allowed to play due to my "condition" anyway. The irony being that I took to photography like a duck to water. I'm sure if you're still reading this, you're wondering where "Zoe" comes into the picture.

Amusingly enough, I found that I liked the name because every person I've ever met named Zoe or Zoey was a very sweet, caring, and energetic person, but I only just discovered tonight that the root word is Greek for "Life"

I've had "questions" about gender for as long as I can remember. A well-intentioned uncle once joked, when I was three, that before I was born, everyone thought I was going to be a girl. I later found out that was some old wives' tale that followed his second son too - everyone was just so sure he was going to be a girl, too. But that was where it really first started for me. Hearing those words, something "clicked".

That same day, I was playing in my room, which doubled as a storage space (This was the 1980s. Child safety amounted to "Let 'em stick that penny in a light socket and learn the hard way") when I found this cute pink satin nightgown - my size. I. was. thrilled. I was so sure mother had bought it for me, within my fragile little three year old logic, but just to be safe, I asked her about it, and she explained that it was something her mother, my ailing grandma had held onto. Mom was the eldest child in a lower class family, so she had to grow up fast to help raise her siblings, so I suppose grandma felt guilty.

She passed away around 1984-ish after a "routine" surgery. Sometimes I wish she was still here so I could talk to her about these things. She was, from what I remember, just that kind of loving person, if in her own way, but like I said, I was three, so I could just be biased because she spoiled me rotten the short time I knew her. (It always makes me smile when I let Zoe out, and realize how much I look like her though)

Back on track, it was only a couple of months later that I decided to play dress-up again, getting into my mother's closet this time, and like any three year old (Or four? I honestly can't remember. So much is a blur these days, and I'm still "young"), I got caught, and lectured about why "boys aren't supposed to wear dresses."

I still remember just feeling utterly... dumbstruck by those words. I know she meant well. My dad was and is a good man, but he had a temper, too. He never struck me, but I watched him verbally tear my brother a new one on enough occasions to be terrified of doing anything wrong.

I've wrestled with the question of "What am I?" ever since. Testosterone wasn't kind to me as a teenager. Teens have enough questions about their emerging sexuality to deal with, but mine was complicated by the fact that I wasn't staring at the cute girls because they were cute girls. I was staring because I was jealous, both of their wardrobe and of their comradery. I wouldn't dare say girls have it any easier than boys, but I'd be lying to say I had many male friends. My two closest friends were my cousin and another girl I'll call Sally, though it doesn't really matter if I use her real name at this point, sadly.

Sally and I were inseperable as kids. I had my first surgery when I was 9, and she was one of the few people to openly welcome me back when I came back to school.

Her dad hung himself when we were about 13 though, and she was just never the same after that. She started doing drugs and stealing pain pills from her mom, then during the summer before our big senior year, she decided life wasn't worth living anymore, and I don't think I ever really recovered from it, or the deaths that followed - two more friends before graduation (one was in a boating accident exactly two weeks before graduation).

Oy. I told you as Zoe, I could talk all day. ;)

The thing that got this started was a stray memory from reading Anistasia Allread's "Camp Kumoni" here on Bigcloset about an awkward boy whose friend convinces him to go to summer camp as a girl. I always seem to see a lot of myself in these stories, and I know they're fictional, but I still find a sense of peace anyway. It's like Cinderella and her wicked stepmothers. Someone sees Cinderella for what she truly is underneath the rags, she's magically transformed, and her Prince Charming sweeps her away.

In this story though, there's a line where the "new girl" and her friend are in the bathroom, and the friend says "You're one of us, now." It reminded me of something I had suppressed; something I'd give anything to go back and do differently.

I mentioned before that I was a photographer in school. I was on the yearbook staff. We had a great staff with a brilliant advisor. Every year we took home either a gold or silver crown, and even made Pacemaker finalist one year, but for all our awards, I think my favorite was "One of the Girls." I'm not making that up, either. Our staff was, up until my senior year, always just girls. It wasn't that they were biased, it was just that no guy in our small town felt he could live down the reputation of being on, what has always been an all-girl staff, so when I joined, the girls just carried on like they always do.

The funny thing is there were times when, working back in the darkroom, I got a chance to have normal conversations with girls who otherwise would never give me a second glance, including two senior cheerleaders. I was always there, and I paid their talk about which hottie was datable or feminine hygiene products (Yes, I accidentally walked in on that one once. I just kept walking), so they decided to give me an award for being such a good sport.

Why would I have done that differently? Because, being a socially awkward, shy nerd, I just stood there, beet-red, wondering if someone had discovered my little secret. And it didn't help that my mother, bless her heart, went on the defensive when we got back to the car afterwards.

We've argued about it so much that I'm surprised the whole town (it's a small town. News travels.) never found out, but that night was particularly bad. I'd give anything to go back there and slap myself for not thanking the photography editor because, even though I was acting "typical male" on the outside, I was on cloud freaking nine on the inside, if only for that few minutes.

That's all I wanted to say for now.

I'm sorry it took so long to read through this, just to get to the bottom, but I've only ever been a reader, both here and on other sites. I don't visit forums, and I absolutely never blog, but a combination of things conspiring to get me to open up a little more and start dealing with the root of my issues (I know, I know, but therapy's too expensive), coupled with that afforementioned line struck a chord with me, but in a good way.

Like I said, I used to love to write. I've had writer's block for nearly eight years now, and normally every time I try to start writing, I'll dash off five pages, then I'll never be able to pen another sentence, but I'm tired of this panic, purge, only to have the whole damn cycle begin again, and this has always struck me as a friendly, supportive place.

Whether or not I'll ever write again remains to be seen. I already feel like I've said too much, but for what it's worth, I think I needed to put this out there, if only so I can come back to it after the holi-daze has worn off, and remind myself that it's okay to let 'Zoe' breathe.

On a final note, while proofreading this, I realized it had kind of a somber tone to it. I'm sorry about that. It's just the way I write. I once made my afforementioned yearbook advisor panic and call the school counselor when she found a poem I wrote similar to the famous "Please God, I'm Only 17" (Not the exact title, but it's been years since I read it), when I, ironically, wrote it with the intention of making people think twice before doing something stupid.

All in all, I feel really good getting this out of my system, but there's a reason Daria Morgendorffer is my heroine. Like me, she thinks too much.

Thanks for a wonderful site, and Happy Holidays,
~Zoe

Edit: PS - I searched, but couldn't really find any hard and fast rules on blog posting, so if you see something out of place, or if I shouldn't have direct-linked Anistasia's story, anything like that, please feel free to send a PM so I can fix it. Love and respect,
~Z