I'm not transgender I'm transsexual

     I don't believe in going stealth. I think I wrote about that earlier. I probably could though if I wanted to. I don't get read very often any more, and in another year when I've completed electrolysis, had twelve more months of estrogen, and am 35lbs lighter it'll be almost impossible to read me. Right now, people have to ask when they do read me because they aren't completely sure. Had I known that transition would be this easy I probably would have transitioned when I first tried; at 19. I probably could have been a 36C instead of the 38B (hopefully C soon) that I am right now, and I would have been transitioning young enough that my hip bones would have widened to be more typically feminine. It's unfortunate that in the past the only transsexuals who have stayed visible have been those that don't pass very well and can't go stealth. Had tranny role models been available for me then I would have transitioned when I needed to not when I had to. So for younger trannies like me, I don't want to go stealth.

     That being said, I am transsexual not transgender. What I hate about being very open with being a transsexual, or rather living in a town where everyone has seen me transition is that way too many people get the two confused. It is worse because transgender has two meanings; one including everyone of any type of trans experience, and the other more accurate meaning is someone who is across or transcends gender. I don't live across or transcend gender. I respect it and admire it. Actually the type of woman I am really attracted to is usually going to be gender queer. But I am not transgender. I am never going to go anywhere as a man, I don't have the ability to go anywhere as a man. I don't live across or transcend gender in any way. It just isn't who I am.

     What infuriates me is that people confuse me with being transgender just because of my past. I did live as a man, and I did act and look like a man for a brief part of my life. It was not natural or easy for me to do. I did it well but it took a tremendous amount of effort on my part. So much so that it almost killed me. When I transitioned it wasn't because I wanted to be a woman, or even because I knew I could never be happy as a man. I knew those things for years. I thought it was my moral responsibility to live with the body "God gave me." If that meant I was going to be miserable for my entire life so be it. Had I been capable of living as a man, I might have continued to do so and have led a miserable life. I drank heavily because it was the only thing I knew of that would numb me enough to endure living in the wrong body. I thought I was transgender because I didn't think it was moral to transition, and I knew that I was not a man.

      From 21 to 25 I was almost able to completely control my need to appear feminine. I basically limited myself to shaving my legs, painting my toenails, and wearing women's underwear. But at 25 something clicked. I just couldn't keep the act up any longer, and I knew that if I didn't give my female self at least some time in my life it would kill me. I realized that the only way I was keeping my female self mostly out of my life was by drinking very heavily and that I had to stop and that I wouldn't see thirty if I didn't. Even then I tried to compromise. I thought that maybe dressing in private part of the time would be enough. I thought I could still be "a man" and just "cross-dress." Had that been enough, I would have been transgender. That wasn't enough and I slowly stopped functioning until I had to move home with my parents, and realized that transition probably wasn't optional for me.

    Even when I knew I had to transition I thought it would be possible to live socially as a woman but work as a man. Even that was not possible for me to do. I reached a point where I physically could not force myself to go to work or anywhere as a man very quickly. I started living full time as a woman a full month before I started hormones. Honestly for me transition wasn't so much about wanting to be a woman, and wanting to learn how to be a woman, so much as it was having to be a woman because I could not be a man. I don't know how to describe it except that the thought of anyone ever seeing me as a man, even in costume ever again almost makes me ill. I'm not transgender because that "man" I was never really existed. He isn't a part of me, he is a costume I wore because I thought I had to. Being transgender is having access to both genders and I really don't. Acting like, speaking like, and looking like a man can never be anything more than mimicking for me.

NOTE: I really don't see my transition as a failure on my part to be a man, and I didn't transition because I wasn't "masculine" enough. I really am a woman. I mean no woman could really live as a man for long and a man certainly can't live as a woman for long. I mean ultimately you're gonna end up being yourself 'cause it's just too difficult to be someone else and that was what I was trying to say in this blog.