Antartica starts here...........

As I stated in my first post I am a MTF Transgender, and a damn awesome one at that, and as I am a sucker for clichés I thought why not share with you all, my millions of devoted minions my "coming out" story, well more to the point my first failed attempt at coming out.

I believe I was round about 12-13 when I first tried to tell my parents I was Transgender, I can remember feeling rather upset and staring in the mirror when I said to my mother "do you ever feel you do not know who the parent staring back at you is?" Yes coming from someone my age that may have sounded quite odd but believe me the signs were always there that I was not comfortable in my gender role. Even if you do not know much about Gender Dysphoria to hear your child say that you would take an interest but my mother merely laughed it off and told me to stop being so silly.....

Around this time I had started growing my hair long and let’s just say my mannerisms were becoming increasingly feminine. Which seemed to have spurred my dad on to try to get my interests to more "male activates" such as football. He stopped this when he got tired of calling me a girl when I flinched because he kicked the ball near me, he always said that like it truly pained him :P sometimes I expected him to double over in pain. Still ever the perseverant type he tried to get me in to cars, it went about as well. He also seemed to tease me about my long hair in an attempt to get me to cut it, it did impress me to be honest how he seemed to have an endless amount of jokes about my long hair. I personally believe he stayed up at night with a notepad and pen coming up with as many as possible for the next day. It got to the point where he had had enough and simply bought a razor and told me I had no choice but to have a haircut, I don't want to go in to detail but yes I cried. Whenever I tell people that they don't seem to understand why it hurt me so much, but I always say if you had a 12yo daughter and you shaved her hair off, and I golden curls, so beautiful :) how would she feel? Ugly, boyish etc Yes I think that would make her cry. I would like to state here that I do not believe in stereotypes this is just who I am and I told this story because the more girly I acted the more my parents pushed in to my perceived gender role.

Despite all this I knew that I had to tell them at some point and like any young child I believed my parents would be there for me and would want to help me through my transition. Kinda wrong there to tell you the truth.... I know everything had pointed to them doing the exact opposite but I am sickeningly optimistic.

So one day I sat them down and just mentioned a few things about Transgender people, ignoring the fact my dad continued to make jokes about them I told them calmly and clearly I am transgender.

"So you fancy men then do you?" was my father’s first response.

"No I like girls"

"But how can you? You just said you wanna be a girl!"

"You do know that some girls do in fact date girls right? And I don’t want to be a girl, I am a girl!" Probably should have pushed it a little lighter here but saying “I WANT to be a girl” always irks me.

"This doesn't make any sense at all, your talking rubbish and I think it’s time we take you to see a therapist, we always knew it would have to happen one day"

And that was that. I tried to argue it but all I get were threats of being taken out of school, took to the doctors, the usual groundings etc If I didn't stop talking nonsense. To this day I wish I had argued it further but when you are that young it seems impossible to stand up to your parents, at least it did to me. I was bullied at school, had other home problems so to fight my corner further would probably not have been the healthiest strategy. But they did send me to a therapist and I have to say he did become a very dear friend of mine, we still speak every once in a while now when he is free, sadly he is quite tricky to get a hold of, but what’s time and distance between friends? To me a friend is a friend no matter how long it’s been since you have spoken and it always seems like yesterday you last saw each other when you meet up. Not related to this story but I wanted to end on a happier note :)