Clues that I was Transgender growing up
When I came out to my friends, most of them were very shocked as there were zero signs that I was transgender. Probably not a good badge of honor, since it just meant I was too good at suppressing and hiding this part of me to the point where it was unhealthy. I'm quite certain the constant hiding and fear of being discovered shaped the way I lived, my personality, as well as taking a toll on me mentally. But that's a story for another post.
I never knew I was transgender until my egg cracked when I turned 35. While I didn't show/feel the common signs that a person was transgender back then (e.g. hate my body), looking back over the years, it was GLARINGLY obvious that I was transgender when I looked at the hints:
- Envied the girls during racial harmony day for being able to wear a qipao
- Always selected a female character when playing video games
- Wishing/praying during birthdays and to God that I would wake up a girl
- Wanting to fill my 6 choices of secondary school with all girls school, so that the administration had no choice but to send me to one of them
- Regularly wanting to wear women's clothes
- Feeling incredible fear that my desire to wear women's clothes would be discovered
- Imagined I was put into a chrysalis like Sarah Kerrigan from Starcraft, except I came out female and beautiful
- Wishing I was Jaceyln Tay in the local drama Legend of the 8 immortals
- Being super smitted by a newspaper cutting of Catherine Zeta Jones from Zorro and wishing I looked like her
- Wishing I could grow out and dye my hair, but didn't because I would be questioned by parents and friends
- Wondering how it would feel to have female body parts
- Wishing I had female body parts
- Always identified with the woman when I watched adult films
- Not feeling like I could click with the boisterous and sporty boys
- Not identifying with masculine heroes for guys like football players
- Being very curious about transwomen performers during a Thailand holiday but pretending to be super uninterested
- Wishing I could be a bride because the dress was so damn pretty
- Staring at brides (when I attended weddings), imprinting in memory how pretty the gown is so that I could imagine myself in it after the event
- If I had superpowers, to be able to stop time so that I could go into shops to try on women's clothing safely
- Feeling free and happy when I wore women's clothes
- Feeling confident and powerful when I finally saw a well dressed female version of myself in the mirror
Ok some of the points in there is showing my age 😅 But the list is so damn long, it was amazing I didn't realise I was transgender until later in life. It was probably because I learned very early in life that boys are not supposed to like girls' things and it was shameful to want it. And saying it out would lead to derision, disgust, being ostracised and bullied. So it became a secret I guarded obsessively, a secret to be taken to the grave. To be fair to myself, there were barely any resources back then. I did try to find books in the library related to transgender and crossdressing, but found nothing. The early internet had some info on transwomen (transsexuals as they were called then), but it seemed so far fetched and impossible that I didn't even consider it a possibility ("I didn't hate my body, how could I be transgender?").
There is a tinge of envy when I look at younger transwomen who grew up with the large amount of information on the internet that sped up their discovery of themselves. Perhaps my egg would have cracked way earlier and I would have transitioned before puberty, without testosterone shaping my body into what it is now. But such thoughts are unhelpful and poisons the mind. Wishing for the impossible is an exercise in futility. There are many things in my life to be grateful for, even in my seemingly tumultuous journey. Like my kid, one of the greatest joys in my life, who would not be around had I transitioned earlier.
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