Am I a woman somehow? Some unnatural changeling created by a malevolent god long thought dead but not? I wish I knew. As far back as I can remember, and my earliest memory goes back to being about fifteen months old, I was never happy about other persons’ expectations of me. As a boy, I was timid and not as arrogantly confrontational as my male family, especially my father, expected of me. I was envious of my sisters being allowed to be quiet and gentle and that no one made a fuss when they said, “No. It’s frightening," or "I don’t want to.”

My three older siblings were girls. I enjoyed dressing in their clothes and liked pretty things, but there was nothing desperate about it. I think I could easily have lived without it, but by the time I was old enough to go to school such games stopped on pain of my father’s belt.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand to this day, the girls grew to hate me for being the youngest, and they never lost an opportunity to get me into trouble with my father who was a violent and dangerous man. I don’t think Mamma referring to me as her beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, bouncing, baby boy helped, which despite the embarrassment she knew it caused me, she called me to the day she died.

My most serious problems with my father arose, despite my timidity, due to my inability to back down. I wasn’t stubborn or disrespectful. I just didn’t know how to back down without him hurting me. I grew up in the high arctic in Scandinavia, and I loved living there. I had no family life, but Mamma was Sámi, so I was too, and I spent little time at home. The Sámi, Sami, Saami, (spell it as you will) are the folk you would probably know by what is considered to be a pejorative term nowadays, Laplanders. Even amongst the Sámi I had no friends of my own age, but I was well regarded by adults.

I had no friends at school. I didn’t like the boys or the physical nature of their play because I was small and they thought it was funny to hurt me. I wouldn’t play with the girls because my sisters were there and if I did I’d end up being hurt by my father. From the age of twelve I was educated at a prestigious English public school, which meant nothing to me, and I never lived with my parents thereafter. I don’t really know why I settled in England. I don’t dislike the English, but I don’t think I can like them as a breed because I don’t understand them, though there are individuals I regard highly and whose friendship I value.

I had a relationship with a Welsh girl when I was in my late teens, and we had a daughter. Though too young then we remain friends to this day, but our daughter turned her back on us both for a life of drugs and debauchery in Canada.

I married an English woman when I was in my mid twenties, and despite my fidelity and commitment she played me false, and I lost everything in a divorce court and never saw our four daughters again. That hurt me more than most can imagine. I tried to establish relationships with the girls twice over the years, but to no avail. My daughters just don’t care. What surprises me still is they didn’t have any inquisitiveness about their origins or my side of their family. I’m told I have over a dozen grandchildren whom not only have I never met I don’t even know their names. I wasn’t prepared to risk more pain by finding out.

I married again at thirty-seven and adopted my wife’s son. I just don’t seem to learn. He was nice enough as a boy but what an unpleasant man he grew to be. I can accept anyone being a waste of oxygen, but when they hurt their mother just for spite they have gone beyond the pale. I’ve heard he’s gone with the daughter of an acquaintance and joined some kind of a Christian cult in east Europe somewhere. They say there’s a fool born every minute, but why I wonder are so many born around me?

One of my sisters died in her forties, another last year and the third has advanced dementia. The family solicitors told me that not long ago. I’m nearer to eighty than to seventy now, so I’ve had plenty of time to think about things, but I’m no nearer to understanding than I was all those years ago. Because I embarrassed them, my sisters had no contact with me for decades. I’ve never known if they knew where I lived, and I’ve never known where they lived. I can only presume they’ll have married and had a family, but I don’t know.

Six children later I’ve had plenty of time to reflect. All my children have turned out to be not only uncaring but not over bright. I at least would have, in their circumstances, wanted to find out what my father could potentially have left me. However that is as may be, and both I and my second and I should add final wife, who may not be particularly clever, but is an extremely good and kind woman, have written wills to match our visualisation of reality.

I can’t help but ask, was it me? Was I so poor at being a man that I blighted my children’s lives? Could I have done things better? I am aware that far better human beings than I have destroyed themselves by dwelling on the ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ in their lives, but still I can’t not do it from time to time.

But back to where I started. I was born a boy and lived life as a not terribly successful man regretting and resentful I’d not been born female. It’s true that I made a lot of money, but it’s right what is said, ‘money can’t buy you happiness’. It’s also true that with money ‘you can be miserable in comfort’. I have always known I would rather have been born female. If I dared, I could justify that choice with serious and long winded arguments, but the truth is I’ve never needed any justification. It’s just how I am.

Am I a hideously malformed woman? Or is it my soul that’s been twisted? Who knows. Of late I’ve researched the issue and just about every thing I’ve come across indicates yes to the former, but I’m still not sure, and with the end in sight the latter torments me. Certainly I’d always have scored close to zero on any scale of manliness, and all my interests and tastes are considered female ones. The majority of my friends have always been women, and I’m sure in this day and age if I had my time over again I’d be looking into the matter in depth.

But I was born a boy, lived a male life and will go to the grave an old man. I shall not be sorry when it’s all over. I’ve not had a happy life, and I’ve had more than my share of regret. I suspect it could have been very different, but it is what it is, and I am what I am. I’m just not sure what that is, and I stopped caring a long time ago. I’m me, but I’m so very tired of being me.

The tears were running off my cheeks as I closed the journal of the great uncle whom I’d never met. I was only a few years old when he’d died at the age of ninety. The journal had been in a box of things left to me when my aunt, one of his sisters children, had died. I’m a granddaughter of one of his other sisters.

There was a lot more in the journal than what, with a degree of rewriting, I’ve related above, but yes without doubt he was trans. So much of what he wrote about paralleled my experience, but, born in a later age, so much was so different for me. His soul searching and desperate reaching for explanations into what was a taboo subject in his day was painful to me. He never used the word trans because the vocabulary didn’t exist then to describe what he sought explanations for.

I knew what I was from a young age and had been supported as a girl and then as a woman all my life. I never had to live the great lie and smile while doing it, and it hurt that she’d gone to the grave a tortured soul after ninety years of torment and self loathing never having known herself for who and what she was. The journal conveys an overwhelming loneliness, and she didn’t even have the friendship and comfort a proper name to use when talking to herself in the privacy of her mind would have given her. And here was I with a loving husband, three children, a caring extended family and a supportive circle of friends. It was enough to make one weep, but I already was.