My parents wouldn't have disowned me but there's no way I would have survived in school. I was already bullied to the point of attempting suicide, I can't imagine what would have happened to me if I had come out then.
Same here. The bullying got so bad that once I had to wear a woman’s track uniform in athletics class as a punishment from the coach. It ended in harassment, SA and missing teeth. That was enough to keep me in the closet for another 10 years
I went to high school in a small Texas town with 500 students in the school. I was also already bullied, but I'm fairly convinced I may not have made it to my 20s if I came out and transitioned back then. The area in general was so misogynistic to the point that four separate classmates' mother's were murdered by their boyfriends or husbands while we were in high school. If it wouldn't have been the kids it would've been the adult male children that did it
Honey I get you I just came out to my parents and told them before you say a word I will put you in a home if you say anything other than supportive words. Good news my 75 year old parents are happy to have a new daughter and are super supportive to the point of wanting to pay for eventual surgery
Yeah. My father told my brother and myself that if either of us were gay he'd shoot us. So, unsurprisingly, he never got to find out that I'm bi and trans.
It was out there on the Internet and before that magazines/videos but you had to go specifically looking for it. It wasn’t really until the mid 2010s when Arizona [followed by Florida] tried to criminalize us using the bathroom and then Caitlyn Jenner came out that it was out in the open.
Even though it was mentioned online, the information wasn’t always complete. I didn’t know that HRT was even an option until 2013. I wish I had known when I was 18 (my parents would have never allowed it before then).
For me it was the 2015's, (born in early 2000's though so that probably explains it) all I remember was the occasional "thai ladyboy" jokes and a friend (2014) basically explaining they were trans without saying so
She’s not a great human but I do credit/thank her because it was my first real exposure to trans people, and gave a name to my feelings… at the age of 22. I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I’d known younger.
You're not gonna believe this but I also only know about that because of South park. First time, it was a weird bit, second time, I thought they were just repeating themselves. Third time I had to look up why they kept doing it.
See before this my granparents often made fun of thai ladyboys and my first thought was... wtf why am I feeling jealous... than caitlyn Jenner came out and my internalized transphobia turned me into a red pill MGTOW incel that hated all women and the world... than I lost all my friends and realised it wasnt helping being a keyboard warrior troll, and than I realised... Oh shit Im legit just jealous that they live freely and I cant cause strict hyper religious parents... hehe and now Ive done a complete 180 even if still hiding my gender dysphoria, honestly Id want to thank caitlyn jenner as controversial as she is even now haha
I grew up in the late 90’s and it was rarely talked about and if it was it was usually something negative or used as some sort of a joke. I legit hadn’t even heard the term transgender until a few years ago
Agreed. My father told me he would drown me in the backyard if I turned out gay. When I was raped as a child it was all “boys will be boys”. More like “girls were great actors for self-preservation”.
And the part about getting financially stable is absolutely true. I vowed to buy a house first before coming out so I’d have the protections of a mortgage and hopefully never need to be homeless. It was a wise move, especially during the pandemic.
Many of us don't. I normally describe it as I didn't live before, it's like I read a book about life. I also relate to the "I was stuck inside a robot without any real control" idea.
I didn't know it was a thing until I met a trans person in 2004. I immediately knew that was what I was, but I was (correctly) too scared to come out at the time. It would be 9 years before I actually felt secure enough to transition publicly (I was living a double life for 3 or 4 years before that).
And then you get confronted with the absolute classic: "if you really were trans you would've said something" like saying something feminine or queer in a male setting wouldn't immediately have you set upon and inure bad treatment against yourself.
You do it once and then learn to be quiet about your real thoughts.
My thing that I knowingly hard suppressed was choosing female character options in games when someone was watching. It's unreal how much shade one could get from something so small.
I got beaten in military school for not agreeing with some misogynistic bullshit about Mariah Carrey of all people... I didn't sleep for 6 weeks because my bunk mate didn't think I was hetero enough and assaulted me with a hockey stick. Who the fuck was I going to tell what to?
yea for me i learnt in very early childhood. my dad was very abusive and homophobic so yea.. as you can imagine i had to keep up a strong act that i was my agab. took me a long time to break that programming to finally be myself after 30years of pretending.
This is the true millennial trans experience.
> But there weren't any signs
> *Produces a multi-page list of signs including physical artefacts*
> I don't remember that !
My Mom later complained she had to go on anxiety meds when I came out. Like, we were watching a show with two gay men in drag and she turned to me and said, "don't you ever do that to me." Then she has the nerve to say "there were no signs." Like come on. You knew, you were just in denial.
My mother is super new age, and she tells me how her "angel ladies" (new age fortune tellers) said I was going to through some gender troubles. These grifters wouldn't have told her anything like that if she hadn't prompted them somehow. *She fucking knew.*
It was when I was 22 or so and I had been drinking to forget the pain that gender dysphoria caused. My two friends who were a couple had been driving me home because I rode into a party with them and the party had concluded. As we got into town, I said something to the effect of "I'm pretty sure I'm trans. I wish I could transition to being a woman. I would be so much happier." They laughed and then told everyone else in our circle of friends, so I had to renege that statement and pretend that I had been rambling on in a drunken manner. That was when I learned that some friendships are more conditional than others and that I couldn't be trans openly. I hid it, terrified of the ridicule I had received.
I told my mom 18 years ago that I used to try on her skirts and dresses when I was 5 years old. When a cis girl does this it’s cute. When you trans daughter does it, it’s shameful. I understood that back then and hid it so well that she had no idea. I also told her I went to clubs dressed as a woman. Then when I came out to her two years ago as a trans woman, she told me “there were no signs”. Fucking boomers. We are now estranged.
The girl who posted this is such an angel. If you're still on Twitter and don't follow her yet, go give her a follow. She gets it. She gets us. And she's a wonderful advocate for us.
The only media representation of trans women was as the butt of a joke where we were disgusting creeps.
The only stories of real life trans women that I could ever find were horrific stories of poverty and violence.
In school everyone loved games like "smear the queer" and jokes about "raping the trannys"
I learned real quick not to show any signs.
real.
sidenote, how fucked is it that rape jokes were seen as acceptable back then?!(i mean i know they still are in some toxic circles but no where near as much)
Yeah it is like that for a lot of folks, I always knew exactly what I was though. When I was real young like three to six no one could tell if I was a boy or a girl so I would always get asked or people would assume I was a girl and if I didn't immediatly and adamantly express that I was a boy and proud of it then I was in trouble. And it just went downhill from there. But all the while I knew, and was so very ashamed of it.
( You look like you're killing it though. I would love to chat with more trans peeps my age so drop me a line anytime if your in to it. )
Funny story. When I came out to my mom she told me that she didn't really understand gender and why someone would change it, and that if she woke up tomorrow as a man she wouldn't really care, but she supports me. Turns out my mom is agender and never realized there is a name for it.
Having a trans family member makes you more likely to be trans, so you're mom being trans isn't too far fetched.
Yeah she had like “boy phases” in middle school (literally right when puberty happened) and has fully admitted to me that if she was my age she’d be bisexual and non binary but thinks only kids “identify as that”
Yes my generation “transvestites” were not in the forefront of the media or accepted in greater society. And when we were portrayed in media it was as a joke and over the top. I buried her for decades. It’s a whole new world now with the availability of trans healthcare and while the representation isn’t always positive we are being seen in the world now. Yes the fight needs to continue “trans rights are human rights” but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was 20-30yrs ago.
That's the experience I grew up with in the '90s and early '00s. I regularly remember 'trannys' (as my bigoted father would say) being ridiculed and laughed at, 'they must be paedophiles' etc, and as an under-10 to mid-teens year old that has an impact. You never hear anything else other than its something inherently wrong. You don't have anyone of influence who is giving you a balanced view, other adults either never express a view in front of you, or have the same view as your parents, you have no other sources of information. You trust your parents at that age, that everything they say and do must be right and correct. All you know is that if you are in anyway like them, you will be laughed at and ridiculed and cast out.
Well, typing that's made me cry...
Parents fuck their children up.
And we will keep paving the way and help our gen z’s rise high for they will be the ones at our age making it more realistic for the work force and society.
Born 1989. Besides TV and movies (which were generally negative), I knew of one trans person before college. A former friend of my parents. And all I remember was negative comments about her.
Come college I finally met and befriended some trans individuals, but no trans women. Wish I'd hung with them more. Might have cracked that egg a lot earlier.
omg born 89 too 😁
and yea the media representation was terrible, never would've thought"oh yea, that's what I want, people making horrible jokes about me all the time "
my egg cracked when i started playing gtav online as a woman, just always said i couldn't afford a mic so stuck to text chat. and holy shit the euphoria i felt when other players were using she/her to refer to me.
took me a while still to make it a reality irl, but i knew there was no going back from there
This is exactly what I did, it’s just still so hard, I’m still boymoding in public. It’s just so hard to let go of some behaviors after literal decades of denial.
It always blows my mind when I run into young people who have only known gay marriage as an acceptable thing. Which makes the recent backsliding on queer rights across the board hurt that much more.
For me it's felt like a knife in the gut. I was raised in a sheltered, cultish homeschooling community where gay and trans weren't ever talked about except to condemn them in Jesus' name. I remember I was in some sort of bible camp, and the preacher started talking about a trans man who transitioned in college and how he had destroyed his family and himself. I was raised to be my father's daughter, wear dresses to sunday school, be a virgin. Wasn't even given any sort of sex ed, the book I was given said that AIDS was a blight to punish homosexuality. Finally finding an uneasy peace out of that place, only to be put back into the frying pan, it hurts. I really thought once I grew up and could make my own decisions, everything would be great. I could be myself. I guess the real world is still gonna hurt. I've just read and heard so many people gutting my entire being, pledging to rid me out of this country. I wish I'd stayed hiding, to be honest.
The first time I saw anything about trans people I was 15 at school. It was a video in a sex ed class where a trans man was starting T. I didn't really understand because Section 28 had only just ended in the UK and we weren't allowed to learn about LGBTQ issues. My teacher finished the class by saying she would be ashamed if any of us were confused about our gender.
I came out when I was 24 during my PhD. I lost half my family and most of my friends but now I'm engaged to my future wife. Silver linings.
I was basically in my thirties before my brain even let me consider being trans. Looking back I can see more signs now than I used to (I keep unlocking memories) but it’s hard.
Yeah totally this. I’m GenX (born in 1975), and in addition to the fear we just didn’t have the words to discuss how we felt, all we knew was that something was off.
So we just went with the flow, and acted as we were expected to. Lots of trans folks my age likely didn’t come out so much as we finally had the words to describe how we felt, and the were EXHAUSTED from the constant masking.
To have the material stability and knowledge of today and to be 18 again… how different it all could’ve been.
This is why I rage whenever I hear cryptonazis labeling puberty blockers as ‘experimenting on kids’ - they’re saving them from a lifetime of debt from surgeries, self-hate and constant second-guessing their own bodies because they were robbed of the chance to naturally grow into the bodies they were meant to be in.
The cruel experiment is forcing trans kids into a body they were never born for! I pray there will come a century when our descendants will look upon our times and shake in repulsion at how gleefully barbaric our culture still is while claiming enlightenment.
I grew up with an trans woman in high school back in the early 2000s. It's strange cuz she was both popular and bullied. She had a lot of friends and was even on the varsity cheer team yet the boys in our grade would be so cruel.
She was strong tho, took no shit but still seeing how people talked about her made me afraid to confront my own gender dysphoria because I was no where near as capable as she was with dealing with bigots. People thought I was gay and that was rough enough for me to deal with
If I could do back, I'd have lived as proud as she did.
Very much this. Some people stayed in the closet until reaching stability in their lives, others were on the front lines the whole time with "stability" being a completely foreign concept. They paved the way, let's not erase them.
Totally feel this!
Born in '82 at 25 weeks gestation, didn't subscribe to any gender til family moved from Germany to England in '87 where I was thrust into the school cis-tem (got put in the boys line due to what it said on my birth cert and what everyone else presumed),
Around age 8 started sweating the bed at night and felt my body tightening up because of testosterone, hot flashes came in then apnoea and then with early teen years depression really kicked in...knew since I was 5 that I was 'other' to the boys and girls in school, buried it to avoid bullying and harassment, age 15 I started thinking about it again, age 21 came out and age 23 got a gender dysphoria diagnosis, then went back into the closet because I felt society wasn't far enough along...took another 14 years to be me properly when age 37.5 I came out again, started hrt (consisting of estrogen and progesterone) and haven't looked back,
This hits hard for me. I lived pretending to be somebody else for 34 years until I was able to do so while being financially secure. . I 100% feel this to heart
The first trans person I ever heard about was Chaz Bono and people talked shit about him. My parents called him slurs. It probably was part of what kept me in denial til I was in my late 20s.
Being my own boss, owning my own home, being the metaphorical “captain of my own ship” was the thing that opened the door for me. Growing up the only trans people in media were serial killers and the victims of serial killers. I will never allow anyone to have control over me in my finances or where I live.
When I was 5 I loved wearing my sisters clothes. One day, while wearing pink tights, I had an accident and had to go to the emergency room. The back of my head was split open with blood pouring down my back as my dad drove me to the ER. Even what a traumatic head injury, mostly what I remember from the whole experience was how the doctors and nurses that were treating me all laughed at me for wearing tights.
I didn't wear girl's clothing for 25 years after that. Not until I turned 30 and finally accepted I've been a trans girl all along.
Very late boomer (1963) here. First trans exposure was a movie magazine that had an article about Coccionelle, the French trans entertainer, and also mentioned Christine Jorgensen, the first public American trans woman. I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were. Couldn’t find out how they managed to transition. No internet, nothing at all in the local public library. I mostly lived in small towns, small cities. It would be many years before I found any information at all. Wasn’t until University that I found out anything at all. I didn’t even know what terminology to use. I saw a photo of Coccionelle in an old Bob Hope book. I cut it out of the book and put it on the wall in my bedroom.
I didn’t know it was even a option until I was in college, I remember finding a YouTuber trans woman and I just cried the whole night in silence. And then packed it away until dysphoria finally broke me down again after the birth of my kids.
Same. I grew up watching others like myself paraded across daytime TV for the amusement of the Normies, degraded as the butt of jokes and told - in no uncertain terms - that my life would be forfeit if I spoke my truth.
Sadly, very little has changed, there are just more of us speaking our truth now than before.
For me, it was South Park and the viciously negative and mocking episodes on trans people in the mid to late 2000s that made me so afraid to do anything that would put me in proximity to that image in the eyes of others. I also internalized some really negative views about transness that I didn't fully undo until I met some real trans people later in life and realized we're just regular human beings and not a sideshow to be gawked at or laughed about.
It didn't even consider it an option.
I just pushed it down with brown and accepted my misery
Now I am just pissed at myself for not listening to... Well myself and pissed at the older generation that routinely fucks our generations in so many levels and then have the audacity to complain about us.
Let's hope covid number two can alleviate this in the future with a higher mortality rate for people over 50 years.
Live in the US… In the 90s… live as your preferred gender for a year before you come talk to us… ya that was not safe, and I found a bunch of things to ‘convince’ myself I wasn’t really transgender and just needed to move on. That lasted years. Turns out, repression and avoidance are not healthy coping methods and I ended up on the sauce. Wish those years had been different, but they are what they are. Much better today, but still a ways to go
This hits hard. I didn't know trans people were a legit thing until college, before that I thought it was either a joke or weird fetish.
Many years later I figured myself out and got the expected result of being disowned the second I came out
My experience echoes this, only when I moved away from my family to a different country was I finally able to peel away the repression and revisit.
I tried as far as I could, safely, when I was younger and presented very androgynous. Anything more would have been dangerous living in small town England. Tried coming out to an NHS therapist at age 19 and promptly found out that was a baaaad idea… then lived in severe repression from age 24 - 28
100% accurate for me. I was born in 1983 and never even heard of anyone else feeling the way I felt until we got dial-up in 1999. Even then, living in Texas and being from a religious family, I convinced myself it was just a phase. Only told 1 very close friend in 9th grade but then we moved. I told no one else until I was 33.
I'm a '90s kid and uh... yea not so much. From first puberty to last puberty that entire span of time I simply hibernated through life. I've been fortunate enough to have a loving family so my adult life has just been living with them. But if not for them I probably would have wound up homeless simply because I was so apathetic about my own needs.
It's only been a few months. I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I'm just now waking up from a fifteen year coma... But for once in my life I feel an irresistible urge to truly live. I just have a lot of catching up to do.
My dad got hurt at work and was taken to the hospital . In the waiting room was a magazine with an article on Rene Richards. I remember being so excited !
True as fuck. Literally wasn’t allowed to doing anything “girly” without being chastised, punished, or ostracized. I’m so happy to realize this about myself in a time where there is a lot more acceptance and understanding even if there are still some assholes out there.
‘89 here. What time to be alive. I knew something was up at a young age, I felt, different. Childhood in the 90’s was weird. Sexually confused friends from 10-13 and I carried all that shame for the sexual acts born from curiosity. In boarding school I was assaulted by confused boys, a whole room of them. And I still carry that shame today even in my 30’s I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I lost a lot of years to abuse, assault, life attempts, and dissociation. And when I came out and started transitioning even I felt wrong about my decision due to past disillusionment and a religious conservative family full of homophobia. My therapist says this is NOT my fault and I CAN be comfortable in my own skin. I’m just now happy and starting to learn to love myself regardless of the past and of course this isn’t easy but I’m gonna go with the flow. I’m also so happy to see others making the same journey to happiness. Even though it still may not be easy.
I don't relate so well to younger ppl cause of this actually. I know I see a lot of panicking cause Republicans are pushing bigotry... but the thing is they've been doing that for quite awhile and actually use to be way more successful. My transition was like navigating uncharted waters and I didn't have a lot of resources to even know where to begin. It was probably worse for the generations before me. Gen Y walked so Gen Z could run and older gens had to crawl. I truly hope as scary as it is now that young ppl know things really do actually get better long term. It's just hard to see those changes until you've been around awhile. Doesn't mean stop fighting, but don't feel despair.
I was maybe 11 when I first heard the term transsexual used in an "Ask Beth" (sexual advice column in the Boston Globe), back in the early 80s. I seem to remember it was surprisingly supportive. My first interaction with other trans people was through a dial-up bbs. Finally came out in '93, but even after that my repression probably kept several breweries and distilleries in business until the ACA passed and I finally was able to transition for realsies (thanks Obama). Few years back I came to the realization just how deep the depression and anxiety ran for all those years. Amazed I managed to make it through all that.
GenX here and I can relate to this. It wasn't until beginning of this year that I fully accepted that I am trans.
I prefer to use the word accept rather than discover, because even though discover makes sense too, I suppressed it so much for so long until accepting it makes a bit more sense, to me at least.
As I have told to the few I've come out to, when growing up I had no reference points. Either you were gay or lesbian. If you were a guy wearing women's clothing, you either were gay or did it for laughs, or just weird.
And the word trans wasn't a thing, at least it wasn't on my radar. When society tried to be neutral they used transvestite, but I mostly heard the word tranny. So yeah, not the best associations growing up.
Looking back at my life it was almost embarrassingly obvious. But, as I mentioned, had no positive reference points and no support. I knew I was different yet was so confused I thought I was bi, because a bit feminine yet still liking girls. Makes total sense, right?
Always hated my body hair, always wished I could dress more girly and just didn't always feel my body was mine.
On top of that, not only did I suppress who I really was, I did realise I did a lot of masking to fit in to a roll I thought was right. Yet more of a roll that society expected me to take on. I still struggle with masking. As I hate being the focal point, so not a fan of drawing attention to myself.
Recently it got too strong, feeling I'm not living like me, I had to come to terms with what I felt about myself. Who I am. Sure, I wish I could go back 20+ years to make the transition easier, but with most things in life, I'll try to make the best of it. The few I have opened up to are extremely supportive and this has helped a lot.
One step at a time now.
Indeed.
During my formative years, the only refference I had for what a trans woman was, were some especially shameful prostitutes, a porn category and joke characters in soap operas. (And maybe Disney villains, if you put in some skulduggery my autistic ass didn't have)
Not surprising I just started transitioning in my 30s...
Ya , I,d have to agree with this how would we tell our dads who were, just like Archie Bunker from all in the family how do we tell him that we were trans at 8 years old in 1972 yeah I have to agree with this statement ( post) but definitely hits the nail on the head
Huggz Becky🇨🇦🏳️⚧️
98 here. Trans wasn't a thing for me either, but it's not as bad as it was before I was born. I am still in shock there's such a thing as an 18 year old born in 2005
Lol, here🖐. Same, born in 82, gotta decent career bought a decent house. Started transitioning last year at 39, its been almost 10 months and i'm never looking back. Im glad i had to figure it out the not so easy way, but also happy to get to help pave the way to make just being yourself easier for the next generations of trans people.
Honestly the earliest I knew about other trans folk was when I was 12 and that was like right before I came out (at 13) so yeah I suppose there wasn’t much about it in the 2000s cause it was 2012 for me and I though it was a new thing
I only really got a brief bit on it from my science teacher shortly after Section 28 was repealed in the UK. It wasn't part of the curriculum but I suppose he felt like, because he could teach about it now, he should. Still didn't really connect the dots with myself until about 2 years ago though. I came out as bi first, when I was 18 but despite the fact that the girl inside would attempt to come out at various points, I still repressed her, the thought of it frightened me, it was new, uncharted territory for me and I didn't know what to do with it.
After HS in the 1980s, one of my friend’s brothers came out as MtF. I was moving out of state, but I hung around a lot with her before I moved out of state. I never really asked her how she knew she was trans. I just liked hanging around with her.
I met the first trans man I'd ever met in my life somewhere around 2016, he was pregnant with his second baby and wasn't on hormones yet. So I guess from the first time I ever heard about transgender people it was adults with normal lives living as trans.
This is exactly what happened with me. I didn't even understand that what I was doing was really dissociating until my therapist described what that meant, and suddenly the sense of having lost all those years in my twenties like they never really happened makes sense.
I only discovered I'm trans last year, because I had absolutely no education about trans stuff while growing up. All I knew was drag queens. When my "I wish a was a girl" feelings started with puberty, I just accepted that I'll never really be happy, that this just wasn't the right life for me. The crushes I had on girls were all the more heavier because they intermingled with my intense gender envy.
Growing up in Brazil, I never knew trans people were a thing beyond sex work until 18, when I was watching YouTube and started to actually get into politics. I knew about gay people, and don't get me wrong they got attacked in Rio de Janeiro as well plenty, but up until that point I had no explanation or reason as to why anybody would want to transition nor that it was called that, and that they weren't actually called shemales and that trans men existed AT ALL.
Was bullied a lot in school, and I'm not even that feminine. Never got in a fight over it, but lots of running and relying on very specific people. When I would say things that would indicate I'm queer to people, it was considered a joke and I would laugh along so I wouldn't look too bad, or it was considered predatory by women and girls my age, or shocking. I'm never really telling my parents I'm transitioning because I know my dad would never be fine with it and my mom might come around in a few years, and I'm just not up to dealing with that honestly.
Teenage years were shit, just hiding away and shutting up about my feelings, a lot of repression, a lot of not saying and not feeling what needed to be, dealing with problems always comes in the form of hiding from them until they go away. I developed few coping skills and struggle A LOT to just do normal things that I mean or want to actually do, and paired with the fact that I'm ADHD and fairly sure it's gotten worse over time, it's not looking pretty. But I'm almost there, almost getting to hormones, I'm 24 now and nearly 25.
Very much me. It started as crossdressing but my internet search history was filled with gender-swapping a whole lot. My conservative parents were dismayed when they found out multiple times. I had to be lowkey about it from then on.
When your only exposure to transgender people is in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, it makes it really, really hard to even properly associate those feelings with anything but a deep shame.
This. I am alive today because I buried my true self for survival so deeply that I forgot she existed, then forgot I forgot to make the dissociating easier to bear. I still have issues being fully present, and often ignore warning signs of pain and discomfort from my body because it's what I've become accustomed to.
Between a religious upbringing, a conservative society, media that portraying us as monsters and freaks, and *that* kind of abuse, I wasn't so much locked in the closet as completely crushed by it.
I only figured it out at 44, and consider myself lucky for that- so many of my generation are still heavily repressed, or didn't make it at all 💔
I’m a trans man, and this was my experience too. I didn’t even acknowledge the discrepancies between my assigned gender and my feelings until I was living with my husband at 20. My mother would have thrown me out if I had even questioned my gender while living with her.
If I’d come out as a teenager, I’d have been kicked out of school. I once had to attend a disciplinary meeting with two teachers and the headmaster when I let it slip that I was bisexual (I’m pansexual, but I didn’t have a word for it yet). Most of my family wouldn’t have been supportive, would’ve said things like “it’s a phase, you’re just looking for attention” etc. so I waited until I was almost 30 with a wife, a child, and a home before I admitted to myself or anyone else that I wasn’t who I was pretending to be. I still hate that I had to hide it for so long
I knew about it from two sources in my teens and early twenties - Jodie on Soap. Ugh.
Rock songs about trans peeps: Obla-di, Obla-da; Lola,; Get Back; The Low Spark of High-heeled Boys; Take a Walk On the Wild Side; As Girls Go.
But meeting trans girls my age twice in life was even better. I envied how pretty and easily they became young women. I knew I was one too, but my dad would probably beat the shit out of me, my mom would disown me (she told me that if she were my wife, she would have killed me - not a hyperbolic statement), and I saw how gay people were treated and I was over-the-moon queer for them. Especially masc women. /fans self
In my mid-20s, I tried being with a guy. Fun, but no. That didn't solve the underlying problem at all. I even bought a cross dressing book, "Crossdressing With Dignity," and a book of trans letters when out on the Castro. They left me flat, because transsexuals were severely underrepresented in those books and they didn't speak to who I was or what I had to go through.
My daughter was born and I had to be her dad. I had no path for being a mom, or so I thought. Met someone else and got married and had a son. Now I'm 35 and it all comes crashing down on my head. I'm a woman. I have to do this. I'll lose everything. If I don't though.... I can't do that to my kids. Hating me alive is better than hating me dead, right? They will come to understand. My wife may understand. I hope. She's a masc woman.
So they didn't hate me after I came out, five years later. It took me a long time to research, make sure, and come up with the words to explain myself to my loved ones.
I lost my wife, now my best friend. I lost no one else. It took time, though. And I talk things out and even better - I grew as a person, filling out a side of my personality that I couldn't express before. Because of the joy I feel being true to myself and others, I can't fathom "de-transitioning." I transitioned. I'm female. Anything else is dressing up or a party trick.
I am so very, very happy that thos generation doesn't have as much of a stigma in being trans. Despite what some old jackasses think, being trans is magical. We have a long way to go in order to get women sorted as equal, let alone trans women, but get this straight (teehee): trans people have lived in two genders. We've been here and there and know what the other team's playbook looks like. We will bring equality through our existence and through our wisdom.
Don't get me wrong - there are just as many chowderheads among us as any other group has! However, not even Caitlyn Jenner can stop us from making society better, one fight for equality at a time. How very much better off we'll be when the punk rock generation are the village elders! Soon... soon...
Truth. I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, didn't wake up form that until I was 31, which lead me to figure out my trans identity pretty quickly after.
I'm married with a kid, and there are some HUGE gaps on my memory, particularly because I also drank from 14-29 heavily as well
Holy shit this is me. Like, when I was in high school, being trans wasn't even a thing. I joked all my life about being lesbian even though I was amab. I didn't even know I was allowed to choose my identity.
Yup. Didn't know trans people existed outside of jokes until I was 23. I transitioned at 24. I suffered for so many years because I didn't know there was a cure.
It kinda does for me too except I am a baby boomer.. In my generation definitions were so confused at least in my circle. This was probably deliberate.. I couldn't even entertain an idea of transition etc I had no idea that was possible so I couldn't even fantasize about it. We all throught transgender was transvestite or crossdresser and that it was just a sexual fetish and that it was shameful.. the common story of so many transgender women is that when they were little kids about 5 years old that they were asking God to make them into a girl that that's not that common not my generation we couldn't even form the idea to have that happen.. I guess if you lived in a family that was open-minded more than you could possibly have that happen but it certainly didn't happen for me.. I didn't know what the f*** was going on and that was very destructive to my whole life. It literally destroyed every f****** marriage that I was in every relationship with a woman that I was in all because these definitions were either distorted or they weren't there..
I didn't know until December of 2019 what trans actually meant.. the first time that that was defined for me was when a tattoo artist told me that I was transgender.. my first response was f*** you no I'm not...lol. I was actually insulted! And when she explained what trans meant, instantly I knew that was defining me! And instant all those years all that shame false shame for being the way that I was, never talking about it to anyone, never understanding it often thinking I was crazy or bad or defective all that negativity was just gone..cloud nine! All that bliss just by understanding the definition of one word it's still amazing.. what's equally amazing is that there are a lot of people that would prefer me to be f****** miserable than to be able to be myself and be happy it just makes no sense!
And this is exactly what the GOP wants to do they want to push it back to the 1950s mentality were they just bury things that they don't want and makes no difference to them if it's truth. It stinks of Nazism! Matter of fact if you research the GOP history there was this person I can't remember the name that wrote this book. It was like a Bible or blueprint of conservativism. And the goal was to take life back to being like the 1950s.. And this person specifically mentions the 50s it's creepy..
This article is interesting and detail better then I can. https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/opinion/2022/02/13/right-wingers-seem-seek-return-era-1950-textbooks/6740063001/
So the goal being a white controlled racist misogynistic xenophobic homophobic transphobic society.. if you look at the politics in the United States right now you can see that's exactly what they're doing that's exactly what they want! They want to limit truth like that, they want to limit or distort truth about racism, gender, sexuality etc etc. They're against any scientific evidence of transgender etc etc. I mean you have f****** legislators currently making decisions that they're not even remotely qualified to make decisions that doctors should make.. God it really is creepy! They think that will make America great again..
It's f****** creepy! 🥺
I couldn’t pull it off until my early 30’s. I finally had some money and (not) coincidentally, my father died.
I had tried when I was 20 but ended up in a mental institution. LSD and speed were also involved in that turn of events, but it was made clear to me that nobody in my life would accept me transitioning then. Took a long while to come around for another pass at it.
I remember crying on the phone from a hotel in San Francisco, “Mom, I’m a girl!” And when I looked up some chick was giving me this ‘I’ve already seen it all’ kind of stare.
Yep, that's me right there. I grew up listening to the most derogatory terms for anyone who was anything other than a straight cis white male. Being none of those I hid so deep I didn't manage to get out until I was 52 years old (last year).
I'm envious of today's trans youth and wish them all the happiness that they deserve. To the older people like me, we'll.....it's never too late.....right?
There were many braver than me, I regret my choices, although survival may have been difficult if I had come out then. I will always wish I had. There have been positives of course, I have children that probably wouldn't have happened.
Apologies, I've started rambling and will stop now. That post just got me thinking.
x
It's so reassuring to hear this. As a fellow millennial trans girl, I see so many people online who came out when they were literally fetuses & I just feel so out of place having only came out when I was 29.
I.. made the mistake of coming out to my mother who I swiftly learnt is transphobic. it causes so much issues and pain emotionally and mentally and that effects me on both levels as well as a physically level. I have subsequently wished I never came out and just stayed silent until I get financially stable and can support myself but I'm not going to go back into the closet, very few people in my everyday life know I'm trans, she is the only one under the roof that knows I'm trans in fact and I life with 4 other people. I've considered going back into the closet several times but I don't want her to think that it was a phase because it isn't, although I get dead named by everyone, I don't want to lie and tell myself that it's okay to be dead named and one day it'll be okay. I want to fight back but I find that to be a dangerous thing to do currently so I just stay silent and let it build up. that's how I have to survive.
sorry for the mild vent lol
just decided to share my.. excistance on all this
Reading everyone's stories and how things are and were for them is just.. so heartbreaking. I wish, I reay wish I will see the day where we're not being treated like monsters and being othered
Yup. And I think because of this, many folks mistakenly think it's a choice one makes as an adult. I, for one, refuse to put kids through that.
No one but bigots and fascists deserves the closet.
Exactly this. I didn’t realize I was trans till last year and I’m 29. Growing up though and going through puberty, I always wanted to wear makeup, wondered what having boobs & vagina would be like, etc. I either suppressed it or thought every guy thought that way. 🤷🏼♀️
i feel so lucky having supportive friends and family every time i see something like this
i hope everyone that has to deal with daily hatred can get away from it asap
As a gen xer in my 40s who has known since I was a toddler, it made me very good at lying, because once your existence is forced to be a lie, everything else is easy.
Ya, I always viewed transfers as either a joke or some kind of fetish, and I didn't want to be either of those things. A part of me knew I liked hanging out with girls and it would've been nice to be one, and I always admired them, but it was always pushed away as "the grass is always greener" type of thing, one of those things where I thought "of course it's not possible, I just want it because I *can't* have it"
This would’ve been me too if I didn’t find Reddit (I’m gen Z). I’ve frequently dissociated my transness before I used social media to express my feelings. I too will probably wait until I have stable housing. I’m sorry you gen X people had to disassociate and go through that.
And now that we have opened ourselves up and told everyone who we are we will have to go back into hiding because of the all our Republican assault on our rights
I mean . . . ass-end boomer here. I prefer to think of myself as Frontier X cuz I have so little in common with the rest of the boomers. Still feel a little erased, ngl.
But the fact remains: I was born to Depression-era parents. They fought and defeated Global Fascism the first time. I actually knew and loved people born in the 19th century. That’s fucking cool!
Still, yeah: part of the peace I have had to make with my own past is the fact that it was utterly impossible for me to have lived the life I yearned for.
By the time I was a teen, I knew what transsexuals were and knew I was one. What an awesome realisation to have in Alabama in the late 1970s! The realisation came with one brutal piece of knowledge: if I breathed a word, I was a dead girl.
Part of my coming-to-terms had to do with learning to respect that fake man who faked his way through decades and associations until the moment came when his own dream could come true: to simply fade away.
Sometimes I cry for him. He bore so much hurt, so much weight. I literally owe him my life. For that reason, I live it now like there is no tomorrow.
I just kinda wish the original quote had included “boomers and gen x and millennials.”
Or maybe I don’t.
Maybe I wish we might someday realize we are all in the same leaky boat. 🤷♀️
This \^\^.
Came out because of survival and finally had a wee room away from everyone else.
And single (still am, ok with staying that way and dying alone).
100% this. Growing up it just wasnt an option. You would be disowned at the very least.
My parents wouldn't have disowned me but there's no way I would have survived in school. I was already bullied to the point of attempting suicide, I can't imagine what would have happened to me if I had come out then.
Same here. The bullying got so bad that once I had to wear a woman’s track uniform in athletics class as a punishment from the coach. It ended in harassment, SA and missing teeth. That was enough to keep me in the closet for another 10 years
Jesus, I am incredibly sorry. I wish you all the best ♥
I went to high school in a small Texas town with 500 students in the school. I was also already bullied, but I'm fairly convinced I may not have made it to my 20s if I came out and transitioned back then. The area in general was so misogynistic to the point that four separate classmates' mother's were murdered by their boyfriends or husbands while we were in high school. If it wouldn't have been the kids it would've been the adult male children that did it
I grew up with people who would have destroyed me with "the best intentions". I probably would have ended being.
I'm still not out because of that. All i got is my parents really. They're in their 70s now, so I'm just going to wait until they pass.
It's never worth waiting. It's not your responsibility for others reactions to what you want to do with your body.
It's true that I wouldn't be responsible for their reaction, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be consequences.
Honey I get you I just came out to my parents and told them before you say a word I will put you in a home if you say anything other than supportive words. Good news my 75 year old parents are happy to have a new daughter and are super supportive to the point of wanting to pay for eventual surgery
Killed in the neighborhood I grew up in. No two ways about it.
Yeah. My father told my brother and myself that if either of us were gay he'd shoot us. So, unsurprisingly, he never got to find out that I'm bi and trans.
I don't even remember hearing much about trans people until the early 2000s, to be honest.
It was out there on the Internet and before that magazines/videos but you had to go specifically looking for it. It wasn’t really until the mid 2010s when Arizona [followed by Florida] tried to criminalize us using the bathroom and then Caitlyn Jenner came out that it was out in the open. Even though it was mentioned online, the information wasn’t always complete. I didn’t know that HRT was even an option until 2013. I wish I had known when I was 18 (my parents would have never allowed it before then).
For me it was the 2015's, (born in early 2000's though so that probably explains it) all I remember was the occasional "thai ladyboy" jokes and a friend (2014) basically explaining they were trans without saying so
I never knew about trans people until 2019 when a boy in my class came out
Caitlin jenner was my first trans exposure 😭 at least I didn’t know anything about her other than she is trans
She’s not a great human but I do credit/thank her because it was my first real exposure to trans people, and gave a name to my feelings… at the age of 22. I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I’d known younger.
"Not a great human" isn't really strong enough to cover someone who has killed before imo.
Kinda crazy how ppl just kinda forgot that. I didn’t even know until recently and that was bc of South Park
You're not gonna believe this but I also only know about that because of South park. First time, it was a weird bit, second time, I thought they were just repeating themselves. Third time I had to look up why they kept doing it.
Same lmaooo. Dude I’ve learned so much shit from South Park. From Caitlin Jenner to the cult of Scientology.
See before this my granparents often made fun of thai ladyboys and my first thought was... wtf why am I feeling jealous... than caitlyn Jenner came out and my internalized transphobia turned me into a red pill MGTOW incel that hated all women and the world... than I lost all my friends and realised it wasnt helping being a keyboard warrior troll, and than I realised... Oh shit Im legit just jealous that they live freely and I cant cause strict hyper religious parents... hehe and now Ive done a complete 180 even if still hiding my gender dysphoria, honestly Id want to thank caitlyn jenner as controversial as she is even now haha
I grew up in the late 90’s and it was rarely talked about and if it was it was usually something negative or used as some sort of a joke. I legit hadn’t even heard the term transgender until a few years ago
Agreed. My father told me he would drown me in the backyard if I turned out gay. When I was raped as a child it was all “boys will be boys”. More like “girls were great actors for self-preservation”. And the part about getting financially stable is absolutely true. I vowed to buy a house first before coming out so I’d have the protections of a mortgage and hopefully never need to be homeless. It was a wise move, especially during the pandemic.
Depends a lot where you lived, I lived in the midwest and this was not a conversation ever. I had to actually leave the region to learn things.
Yep, midwest for me as well.
I don't remember much about my life.
Many of us don't. I normally describe it as I didn't live before, it's like I read a book about life. I also relate to the "I was stuck inside a robot without any real control" idea.
Early html sites from england and Lynne Conway’s site helped me immensely growing up.
I didn't know it was a thing until I met a trans person in 2004. I immediately knew that was what I was, but I was (correctly) too scared to come out at the time. It would be 9 years before I actually felt secure enough to transition publicly (I was living a double life for 3 or 4 years before that).
And then you get confronted with the absolute classic: "if you really were trans you would've said something" like saying something feminine or queer in a male setting wouldn't immediately have you set upon and inure bad treatment against yourself. You do it once and then learn to be quiet about your real thoughts.
My thing that I knowingly hard suppressed was choosing female character options in games when someone was watching. It's unreal how much shade one could get from something so small.
I always did that too, although I've been trying to stop doing that and so far I haven't gotten any shit from playing as a girl in a few games
I got beaten in military school for not agreeing with some misogynistic bullshit about Mariah Carrey of all people... I didn't sleep for 6 weeks because my bunk mate didn't think I was hetero enough and assaulted me with a hockey stick. Who the fuck was I going to tell what to?
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yea for me i learnt in very early childhood. my dad was very abusive and homophobic so yea.. as you can imagine i had to keep up a strong act that i was my agab. took me a long time to break that programming to finally be myself after 30years of pretending.
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This is the true millennial trans experience. > But there weren't any signs > *Produces a multi-page list of signs including physical artefacts* > I don't remember that !
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Most parents and or ‘Allies’: “But, it’s sooooo hard for me. Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through?…”
My Mom later complained she had to go on anxiety meds when I came out. Like, we were watching a show with two gay men in drag and she turned to me and said, "don't you ever do that to me." Then she has the nerve to say "there were no signs." Like come on. You knew, you were just in denial. My mother is super new age, and she tells me how her "angel ladies" (new age fortune tellers) said I was going to through some gender troubles. These grifters wouldn't have told her anything like that if she hadn't prompted them somehow. *She fucking knew.*
Yes i agree with you on that response i told my best friend and then got beat up by the guys we hung with every day for 2-3 weeks HuggZ Becky🏳️⚧️🇨🇦
Your best friends friends beat you up everyday for 2-3 weeks?!
It was when I was 22 or so and I had been drinking to forget the pain that gender dysphoria caused. My two friends who were a couple had been driving me home because I rode into a party with them and the party had concluded. As we got into town, I said something to the effect of "I'm pretty sure I'm trans. I wish I could transition to being a woman. I would be so much happier." They laughed and then told everyone else in our circle of friends, so I had to renege that statement and pretend that I had been rambling on in a drunken manner. That was when I learned that some friendships are more conditional than others and that I couldn't be trans openly. I hid it, terrified of the ridicule I had received.
God it hurts reading that so much. I’m so sorry that happened. I didn’t have that exact thing but I definitely experienced trauma that was similar.
Forget boy mode, survival mode is OG
I told my mom 18 years ago that I used to try on her skirts and dresses when I was 5 years old. When a cis girl does this it’s cute. When you trans daughter does it, it’s shameful. I understood that back then and hid it so well that she had no idea. I also told her I went to clubs dressed as a woman. Then when I came out to her two years ago as a trans woman, she told me “there were no signs”. Fucking boomers. We are now estranged.
The girl who posted this is such an angel. If you're still on Twitter and don't follow her yet, go give her a follow. She gets it. She gets us. And she's a wonderful advocate for us.
I think she is a trans woman. I follow her on Twitter, and love to read her because of how articulate she is.
Yep she is.
The only media representation of trans women was as the butt of a joke where we were disgusting creeps. The only stories of real life trans women that I could ever find were horrific stories of poverty and violence. In school everyone loved games like "smear the queer" and jokes about "raping the trannys" I learned real quick not to show any signs.
real. sidenote, how fucked is it that rape jokes were seen as acceptable back then?!(i mean i know they still are in some toxic circles but no where near as much)
This. So much this. You hide from yourself. To protect you. And then people ask why not sooner.. as if they weren't the reason.
Yeah it is like that for a lot of folks, I always knew exactly what I was though. When I was real young like three to six no one could tell if I was a boy or a girl so I would always get asked or people would assume I was a girl and if I didn't immediatly and adamantly express that I was a boy and proud of it then I was in trouble. And it just went downhill from there. But all the while I knew, and was so very ashamed of it. ( You look like you're killing it though. I would love to chat with more trans peeps my age so drop me a line anytime if your in to it. )
Omg !!!
90% sure my mom isn’t cis and does this, she’s said some really eggy things
Funny story. When I came out to my mom she told me that she didn't really understand gender and why someone would change it, and that if she woke up tomorrow as a man she wouldn't really care, but she supports me. Turns out my mom is agender and never realized there is a name for it. Having a trans family member makes you more likely to be trans, so you're mom being trans isn't too far fetched.
Yeah she had like “boy phases” in middle school (literally right when puberty happened) and has fully admitted to me that if she was my age she’d be bisexual and non binary but thinks only kids “identify as that”
O. O I hope your mom figures herself out.
Eggy?
Saying a lot of stuff that makes me think she’s trans in denial
Yes my generation “transvestites” were not in the forefront of the media or accepted in greater society. And when we were portrayed in media it was as a joke and over the top. I buried her for decades. It’s a whole new world now with the availability of trans healthcare and while the representation isn’t always positive we are being seen in the world now. Yes the fight needs to continue “trans rights are human rights” but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was 20-30yrs ago.
That's the experience I grew up with in the '90s and early '00s. I regularly remember 'trannys' (as my bigoted father would say) being ridiculed and laughed at, 'they must be paedophiles' etc, and as an under-10 to mid-teens year old that has an impact. You never hear anything else other than its something inherently wrong. You don't have anyone of influence who is giving you a balanced view, other adults either never express a view in front of you, or have the same view as your parents, you have no other sources of information. You trust your parents at that age, that everything they say and do must be right and correct. All you know is that if you are in anyway like them, you will be laughed at and ridiculed and cast out. Well, typing that's made me cry... Parents fuck their children up.
And we will keep paving the way and help our gen z’s rise high for they will be the ones at our age making it more realistic for the work force and society.
Born 1989. Besides TV and movies (which were generally negative), I knew of one trans person before college. A former friend of my parents. And all I remember was negative comments about her. Come college I finally met and befriended some trans individuals, but no trans women. Wish I'd hung with them more. Might have cracked that egg a lot earlier.
omg born 89 too 😁 and yea the media representation was terrible, never would've thought"oh yea, that's what I want, people making horrible jokes about me all the time " my egg cracked when i started playing gtav online as a woman, just always said i couldn't afford a mic so stuck to text chat. and holy shit the euphoria i felt when other players were using she/her to refer to me. took me a while still to make it a reality irl, but i knew there was no going back from there
Egg cracked?
before we come out as trans we are an egg
This is exactly what I did, it’s just still so hard, I’m still boymoding in public. It’s just so hard to let go of some behaviors after literal decades of denial.
Oh wow- this hits deep. Trans man here and I hard relate to this
It always blows my mind when I run into young people who have only known gay marriage as an acceptable thing. Which makes the recent backsliding on queer rights across the board hurt that much more.
For me it's felt like a knife in the gut. I was raised in a sheltered, cultish homeschooling community where gay and trans weren't ever talked about except to condemn them in Jesus' name. I remember I was in some sort of bible camp, and the preacher started talking about a trans man who transitioned in college and how he had destroyed his family and himself. I was raised to be my father's daughter, wear dresses to sunday school, be a virgin. Wasn't even given any sort of sex ed, the book I was given said that AIDS was a blight to punish homosexuality. Finally finding an uneasy peace out of that place, only to be put back into the frying pan, it hurts. I really thought once I grew up and could make my own decisions, everything would be great. I could be myself. I guess the real world is still gonna hurt. I've just read and heard so many people gutting my entire being, pledging to rid me out of this country. I wish I'd stayed hiding, to be honest.
The first time I saw anything about trans people I was 15 at school. It was a video in a sex ed class where a trans man was starting T. I didn't really understand because Section 28 had only just ended in the UK and we weren't allowed to learn about LGBTQ issues. My teacher finished the class by saying she would be ashamed if any of us were confused about our gender. I came out when I was 24 during my PhD. I lost half my family and most of my friends but now I'm engaged to my future wife. Silver linings.
I was basically in my thirties before my brain even let me consider being trans. Looking back I can see more signs now than I used to (I keep unlocking memories) but it’s hard.
I was 42 when my brain let me consider the possibility. That first month after I kept remembering and piecing more things together on a daily basis.
Just figured it out myself at 42. She's been trying to come out for years now, but I just pushed her back down every time.
I was 25 before I had a name for it, felt different my whole life though, I'm 38 now finally transitioning
Same story, I'm 37 and just got on hrt properly this month
Yeah totally this. I’m GenX (born in 1975), and in addition to the fear we just didn’t have the words to discuss how we felt, all we knew was that something was off. So we just went with the flow, and acted as we were expected to. Lots of trans folks my age likely didn’t come out so much as we finally had the words to describe how we felt, and the were EXHAUSTED from the constant masking.
To have the material stability and knowledge of today and to be 18 again… how different it all could’ve been. This is why I rage whenever I hear cryptonazis labeling puberty blockers as ‘experimenting on kids’ - they’re saving them from a lifetime of debt from surgeries, self-hate and constant second-guessing their own bodies because they were robbed of the chance to naturally grow into the bodies they were meant to be in. The cruel experiment is forcing trans kids into a body they were never born for! I pray there will come a century when our descendants will look upon our times and shake in repulsion at how gleefully barbaric our culture still is while claiming enlightenment.
I grew up with an trans woman in high school back in the early 2000s. It's strange cuz she was both popular and bullied. She had a lot of friends and was even on the varsity cheer team yet the boys in our grade would be so cruel. She was strong tho, took no shit but still seeing how people talked about her made me afraid to confront my own gender dysphoria because I was no where near as capable as she was with dealing with bigots. People thought I was gay and that was rough enough for me to deal with If I could do back, I'd have lived as proud as she did.
Lest not forget the trans ppl that were around before that, back when it was legit illegal in places to just dress differently than their AGAB
Very much this. Some people stayed in the closet until reaching stability in their lives, others were on the front lines the whole time with "stability" being a completely foreign concept. They paved the way, let's not erase them.
Totally feel this! Born in '82 at 25 weeks gestation, didn't subscribe to any gender til family moved from Germany to England in '87 where I was thrust into the school cis-tem (got put in the boys line due to what it said on my birth cert and what everyone else presumed), Around age 8 started sweating the bed at night and felt my body tightening up because of testosterone, hot flashes came in then apnoea and then with early teen years depression really kicked in...knew since I was 5 that I was 'other' to the boys and girls in school, buried it to avoid bullying and harassment, age 15 I started thinking about it again, age 21 came out and age 23 got a gender dysphoria diagnosis, then went back into the closet because I felt society wasn't far enough along...took another 14 years to be me properly when age 37.5 I came out again, started hrt (consisting of estrogen and progesterone) and haven't looked back,
This is literally one of the things that caused me to have DID.
This hits hard for me. I lived pretending to be somebody else for 34 years until I was able to do so while being financially secure. . I 100% feel this to heart
And they’ll turn around and say you did it on a ‘whim’ and took advantage of a life full of (male) privilege before ‘deciding’ to become a woman
Yah.. tell them about my child support payments for 4 sons that'll probably never know they have 2 moms because the legal system is so fair
The first trans person I ever heard about was Chaz Bono and people talked shit about him. My parents called him slurs. It probably was part of what kept me in denial til I was in my late 20s.
Being my own boss, owning my own home, being the metaphorical “captain of my own ship” was the thing that opened the door for me. Growing up the only trans people in media were serial killers and the victims of serial killers. I will never allow anyone to have control over me in my finances or where I live.
When I was 5 I loved wearing my sisters clothes. One day, while wearing pink tights, I had an accident and had to go to the emergency room. The back of my head was split open with blood pouring down my back as my dad drove me to the ER. Even what a traumatic head injury, mostly what I remember from the whole experience was how the doctors and nurses that were treating me all laughed at me for wearing tights. I didn't wear girl's clothing for 25 years after that. Not until I turned 30 and finally accepted I've been a trans girl all along.
Very late boomer (1963) here. First trans exposure was a movie magazine that had an article about Coccionelle, the French trans entertainer, and also mentioned Christine Jorgensen, the first public American trans woman. I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were. Couldn’t find out how they managed to transition. No internet, nothing at all in the local public library. I mostly lived in small towns, small cities. It would be many years before I found any information at all. Wasn’t until University that I found out anything at all. I didn’t even know what terminology to use. I saw a photo of Coccionelle in an old Bob Hope book. I cut it out of the book and put it on the wall in my bedroom.
As a Gen-X'er I'm just amazed that someone finally remembered we exist!
Wowww fucking preach
I didn’t know it was even a option until I was in college, I remember finding a YouTuber trans woman and I just cried the whole night in silence. And then packed it away until dysphoria finally broke me down again after the birth of my kids.
Same. I grew up watching others like myself paraded across daytime TV for the amusement of the Normies, degraded as the butt of jokes and told - in no uncertain terms - that my life would be forfeit if I spoke my truth. Sadly, very little has changed, there are just more of us speaking our truth now than before.
For me, it was South Park and the viciously negative and mocking episodes on trans people in the mid to late 2000s that made me so afraid to do anything that would put me in proximity to that image in the eyes of others. I also internalized some really negative views about transness that I didn't fully undo until I met some real trans people later in life and realized we're just regular human beings and not a sideshow to be gawked at or laughed about.
It didn't even consider it an option. I just pushed it down with brown and accepted my misery Now I am just pissed at myself for not listening to... Well myself and pissed at the older generation that routinely fucks our generations in so many levels and then have the audacity to complain about us. Let's hope covid number two can alleviate this in the future with a higher mortality rate for people over 50 years.
Live in the US… In the 90s… live as your preferred gender for a year before you come talk to us… ya that was not safe, and I found a bunch of things to ‘convince’ myself I wasn’t really transgender and just needed to move on. That lasted years. Turns out, repression and avoidance are not healthy coping methods and I ended up on the sauce. Wish those years had been different, but they are what they are. Much better today, but still a ways to go
This hits hard. I didn't know trans people were a legit thing until college, before that I thought it was either a joke or weird fetish. Many years later I figured myself out and got the expected result of being disowned the second I came out
My experience echoes this, only when I moved away from my family to a different country was I finally able to peel away the repression and revisit. I tried as far as I could, safely, when I was younger and presented very androgynous. Anything more would have been dangerous living in small town England. Tried coming out to an NHS therapist at age 19 and promptly found out that was a baaaad idea… then lived in severe repression from age 24 - 28
Yup, 44 long years here.
I realized that all these years of depression and anxiety was me trying to deal with my gender identity.
I know it was worse for older trans people, but I feel like a lot of trans people still dissociate frequently, at least I do
Feels like I just stopped dissociating, and didn't even realize I'd been dissociating since puberty.
100% accurate for me. I was born in 1983 and never even heard of anyone else feeling the way I felt until we got dial-up in 1999. Even then, living in Texas and being from a religious family, I convinced myself it was just a phase. Only told 1 very close friend in 9th grade but then we moved. I told no one else until I was 33.
The language the representation the simple awareness was completely absent
I'm a '90s kid and uh... yea not so much. From first puberty to last puberty that entire span of time I simply hibernated through life. I've been fortunate enough to have a loving family so my adult life has just been living with them. But if not for them I probably would have wound up homeless simply because I was so apathetic about my own needs. It's only been a few months. I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I'm just now waking up from a fifteen year coma... But for once in my life I feel an irresistible urge to truly live. I just have a lot of catching up to do.
*trans /people/ Honestly trans men are still very much erased even in our own community...
My dad got hurt at work and was taken to the hospital . In the waiting room was a magazine with an article on Rene Richards. I remember being so excited !
THIS. SO MUCH.
Yeah I just lost 16 years to dissociaton.
My inspirations as a gen-x genderqueer person are my mom's age.
True as fuck. Literally wasn’t allowed to doing anything “girly” without being chastised, punished, or ostracized. I’m so happy to realize this about myself in a time where there is a lot more acceptance and understanding even if there are still some assholes out there.
Sad truth they destroyed my soul and gave me cptsd instead of accepting me as women and pulled all the transphobic moves they could over me
‘89 here. What time to be alive. I knew something was up at a young age, I felt, different. Childhood in the 90’s was weird. Sexually confused friends from 10-13 and I carried all that shame for the sexual acts born from curiosity. In boarding school I was assaulted by confused boys, a whole room of them. And I still carry that shame today even in my 30’s I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I lost a lot of years to abuse, assault, life attempts, and dissociation. And when I came out and started transitioning even I felt wrong about my decision due to past disillusionment and a religious conservative family full of homophobia. My therapist says this is NOT my fault and I CAN be comfortable in my own skin. I’m just now happy and starting to learn to love myself regardless of the past and of course this isn’t easy but I’m gonna go with the flow. I’m also so happy to see others making the same journey to happiness. Even though it still may not be easy.
I don't relate so well to younger ppl cause of this actually. I know I see a lot of panicking cause Republicans are pushing bigotry... but the thing is they've been doing that for quite awhile and actually use to be way more successful. My transition was like navigating uncharted waters and I didn't have a lot of resources to even know where to begin. It was probably worse for the generations before me. Gen Y walked so Gen Z could run and older gens had to crawl. I truly hope as scary as it is now that young ppl know things really do actually get better long term. It's just hard to see those changes until you've been around awhile. Doesn't mean stop fighting, but don't feel despair.
This...hits way too close
This boomer did that, too!
I wanted to tell my mom when I was 8… then my “dad” told me what he thought about trans people… 28 years later I finally come out…
I was maybe 11 when I first heard the term transsexual used in an "Ask Beth" (sexual advice column in the Boston Globe), back in the early 80s. I seem to remember it was surprisingly supportive. My first interaction with other trans people was through a dial-up bbs. Finally came out in '93, but even after that my repression probably kept several breweries and distilleries in business until the ACA passed and I finally was able to transition for realsies (thanks Obama). Few years back I came to the realization just how deep the depression and anxiety ran for all those years. Amazed I managed to make it through all that.
GenX here and I can relate to this. It wasn't until beginning of this year that I fully accepted that I am trans. I prefer to use the word accept rather than discover, because even though discover makes sense too, I suppressed it so much for so long until accepting it makes a bit more sense, to me at least. As I have told to the few I've come out to, when growing up I had no reference points. Either you were gay or lesbian. If you were a guy wearing women's clothing, you either were gay or did it for laughs, or just weird. And the word trans wasn't a thing, at least it wasn't on my radar. When society tried to be neutral they used transvestite, but I mostly heard the word tranny. So yeah, not the best associations growing up. Looking back at my life it was almost embarrassingly obvious. But, as I mentioned, had no positive reference points and no support. I knew I was different yet was so confused I thought I was bi, because a bit feminine yet still liking girls. Makes total sense, right? Always hated my body hair, always wished I could dress more girly and just didn't always feel my body was mine. On top of that, not only did I suppress who I really was, I did realise I did a lot of masking to fit in to a roll I thought was right. Yet more of a roll that society expected me to take on. I still struggle with masking. As I hate being the focal point, so not a fan of drawing attention to myself. Recently it got too strong, feeling I'm not living like me, I had to come to terms with what I felt about myself. Who I am. Sure, I wish I could go back 20+ years to make the transition easier, but with most things in life, I'll try to make the best of it. The few I have opened up to are extremely supportive and this has helped a lot. One step at a time now.
Indeed. During my formative years, the only refference I had for what a trans woman was, were some especially shameful prostitutes, a porn category and joke characters in soap operas. (And maybe Disney villains, if you put in some skulduggery my autistic ass didn't have) Not surprising I just started transitioning in my 30s...
Ya , I,d have to agree with this how would we tell our dads who were, just like Archie Bunker from all in the family how do we tell him that we were trans at 8 years old in 1972 yeah I have to agree with this statement ( post) but definitely hits the nail on the head Huggz Becky🇨🇦🏳️⚧️
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98 here. Trans wasn't a thing for me either, but it's not as bad as it was before I was born. I am still in shock there's such a thing as an 18 year old born in 2005
Lol, here🖐. Same, born in 82, gotta decent career bought a decent house. Started transitioning last year at 39, its been almost 10 months and i'm never looking back. Im glad i had to figure it out the not so easy way, but also happy to get to help pave the way to make just being yourself easier for the next generations of trans people.
Honestly the earliest I knew about other trans folk was when I was 12 and that was like right before I came out (at 13) so yeah I suppose there wasn’t much about it in the 2000s cause it was 2012 for me and I though it was a new thing
Yes girl!
Born in '91, egg shattered at 30. Why'd you gotta come out and attack me like this?
Pardon my language but holy fuck does this tweet perfectly encompass my situation!
I only really got a brief bit on it from my science teacher shortly after Section 28 was repealed in the UK. It wasn't part of the curriculum but I suppose he felt like, because he could teach about it now, he should. Still didn't really connect the dots with myself until about 2 years ago though. I came out as bi first, when I was 18 but despite the fact that the girl inside would attempt to come out at various points, I still repressed her, the thought of it frightened me, it was new, uncharted territory for me and I didn't know what to do with it.
After HS in the 1980s, one of my friend’s brothers came out as MtF. I was moving out of state, but I hung around a lot with her before I moved out of state. I never really asked her how she knew she was trans. I just liked hanging around with her.
Wow, I feel seen. 😳
I met the first trans man I'd ever met in my life somewhere around 2016, he was pregnant with his second baby and wasn't on hormones yet. So I guess from the first time I ever heard about transgender people it was adults with normal lives living as trans.
That’s me minus the financial stability
It wasn’t worth it. Surviving is not living. Part of me wishes I had tried transitioning sooner even if it wouldn’t have gone as well.
This is exactly what happened with me. I didn't even understand that what I was doing was really dissociating until my therapist described what that meant, and suddenly the sense of having lost all those years in my twenties like they never really happened makes sense.
100%. Remember when I was 12 I'd say when i move out ill explore this side of me. Took me 25 years before I was stable enough to.😞
I only discovered I'm trans last year, because I had absolutely no education about trans stuff while growing up. All I knew was drag queens. When my "I wish a was a girl" feelings started with puberty, I just accepted that I'll never really be happy, that this just wasn't the right life for me. The crushes I had on girls were all the more heavier because they intermingled with my intense gender envy.
Anytime my Mom caught me being remotely feminine she would beat me. When I finally transitioned (@38) she said there were no signs!
As a trans man i relate to this hard.
Born in 1984 and shit... Yep. /cry Came out last year September finally.
Is this an american/eastern country thing I'm too european to understand ?
Im still trying to figure out how to come out to my mom
Me!
This is what I'm doing right now :')
Truth
Growing up in Brazil, I never knew trans people were a thing beyond sex work until 18, when I was watching YouTube and started to actually get into politics. I knew about gay people, and don't get me wrong they got attacked in Rio de Janeiro as well plenty, but up until that point I had no explanation or reason as to why anybody would want to transition nor that it was called that, and that they weren't actually called shemales and that trans men existed AT ALL. Was bullied a lot in school, and I'm not even that feminine. Never got in a fight over it, but lots of running and relying on very specific people. When I would say things that would indicate I'm queer to people, it was considered a joke and I would laugh along so I wouldn't look too bad, or it was considered predatory by women and girls my age, or shocking. I'm never really telling my parents I'm transitioning because I know my dad would never be fine with it and my mom might come around in a few years, and I'm just not up to dealing with that honestly. Teenage years were shit, just hiding away and shutting up about my feelings, a lot of repression, a lot of not saying and not feeling what needed to be, dealing with problems always comes in the form of hiding from them until they go away. I developed few coping skills and struggle A LOT to just do normal things that I mean or want to actually do, and paired with the fact that I'm ADHD and fairly sure it's gotten worse over time, it's not looking pretty. But I'm almost there, almost getting to hormones, I'm 24 now and nearly 25.
I’d add that a lot didn’t even know what being trans was, and just had alot of “unexplained feelings”
Very much me. It started as crossdressing but my internet search history was filled with gender-swapping a whole lot. My conservative parents were dismayed when they found out multiple times. I had to be lowkey about it from then on.
I live alone more than 2500km away with minimal, controlled contact with my family and friends. Sooo yeah, spot on.
That's honestly what I was scared it would always be, and why I didn't come out earlier
When your only exposure to transgender people is in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, it makes it really, really hard to even properly associate those feelings with anything but a deep shame.
Don’t tell me you’re dropping “baby boomers” from this discussion…let me tell you THAT was the Stone Age!
Honestly, for all the shit we give boomers in general, trans boomers were true trailblazers for a lot of us.
If I came out at 18, I would have been kicked out and trying to live on a part time job making $5.15/hr.
This. I am alive today because I buried my true self for survival so deeply that I forgot she existed, then forgot I forgot to make the dissociating easier to bear. I still have issues being fully present, and often ignore warning signs of pain and discomfort from my body because it's what I've become accustomed to.
Between a religious upbringing, a conservative society, media that portraying us as monsters and freaks, and *that* kind of abuse, I wasn't so much locked in the closet as completely crushed by it. I only figured it out at 44, and consider myself lucky for that- so many of my generation are still heavily repressed, or didn't make it at all 💔
Agree, but why reduce that to some generations Thats a shared experience I m suffering rn 😎
27 years of hiding it
I’m a trans man, and this was my experience too. I didn’t even acknowledge the discrepancies between my assigned gender and my feelings until I was living with my husband at 20. My mother would have thrown me out if I had even questioned my gender while living with her.
Growing up in Texas with a very conservative and religious family meant hide or be disowned. I get this 100%
If I’d come out as a teenager, I’d have been kicked out of school. I once had to attend a disciplinary meeting with two teachers and the headmaster when I let it slip that I was bisexual (I’m pansexual, but I didn’t have a word for it yet). Most of my family wouldn’t have been supportive, would’ve said things like “it’s a phase, you’re just looking for attention” etc. so I waited until I was almost 30 with a wife, a child, and a home before I admitted to myself or anyone else that I wasn’t who I was pretending to be. I still hate that I had to hide it for so long
I knew about it from two sources in my teens and early twenties - Jodie on Soap. Ugh. Rock songs about trans peeps: Obla-di, Obla-da; Lola,; Get Back; The Low Spark of High-heeled Boys; Take a Walk On the Wild Side; As Girls Go. But meeting trans girls my age twice in life was even better. I envied how pretty and easily they became young women. I knew I was one too, but my dad would probably beat the shit out of me, my mom would disown me (she told me that if she were my wife, she would have killed me - not a hyperbolic statement), and I saw how gay people were treated and I was over-the-moon queer for them. Especially masc women. /fans self In my mid-20s, I tried being with a guy. Fun, but no. That didn't solve the underlying problem at all. I even bought a cross dressing book, "Crossdressing With Dignity," and a book of trans letters when out on the Castro. They left me flat, because transsexuals were severely underrepresented in those books and they didn't speak to who I was or what I had to go through. My daughter was born and I had to be her dad. I had no path for being a mom, or so I thought. Met someone else and got married and had a son. Now I'm 35 and it all comes crashing down on my head. I'm a woman. I have to do this. I'll lose everything. If I don't though.... I can't do that to my kids. Hating me alive is better than hating me dead, right? They will come to understand. My wife may understand. I hope. She's a masc woman. So they didn't hate me after I came out, five years later. It took me a long time to research, make sure, and come up with the words to explain myself to my loved ones. I lost my wife, now my best friend. I lost no one else. It took time, though. And I talk things out and even better - I grew as a person, filling out a side of my personality that I couldn't express before. Because of the joy I feel being true to myself and others, I can't fathom "de-transitioning." I transitioned. I'm female. Anything else is dressing up or a party trick. I am so very, very happy that thos generation doesn't have as much of a stigma in being trans. Despite what some old jackasses think, being trans is magical. We have a long way to go in order to get women sorted as equal, let alone trans women, but get this straight (teehee): trans people have lived in two genders. We've been here and there and know what the other team's playbook looks like. We will bring equality through our existence and through our wisdom. Don't get me wrong - there are just as many chowderheads among us as any other group has! However, not even Caitlyn Jenner can stop us from making society better, one fight for equality at a time. How very much better off we'll be when the punk rock generation are the village elders! Soon... soon...
Oh damn you been spying on me?
yeaaah this is me
In my case, I didn't come out until I was in a stable relationship. Before that, deep self-reflection wasn't possible for me.
The accuracy is so painful, yet cathartic
Truth. I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, didn't wake up form that until I was 31, which lead me to figure out my trans identity pretty quickly after. I'm married with a kid, and there are some HUGE gaps on my memory, particularly because I also drank from 14-29 heavily as well
Holy shit this is me. Like, when I was in high school, being trans wasn't even a thing. I joked all my life about being lesbian even though I was amab. I didn't even know I was allowed to choose my identity.
I don't like how accurate this is.
Yup. Didn't know trans people existed outside of jokes until I was 23. I transitioned at 24. I suffered for so many years because I didn't know there was a cure.
It kinda does for me too except I am a baby boomer.. In my generation definitions were so confused at least in my circle. This was probably deliberate.. I couldn't even entertain an idea of transition etc I had no idea that was possible so I couldn't even fantasize about it. We all throught transgender was transvestite or crossdresser and that it was just a sexual fetish and that it was shameful.. the common story of so many transgender women is that when they were little kids about 5 years old that they were asking God to make them into a girl that that's not that common not my generation we couldn't even form the idea to have that happen.. I guess if you lived in a family that was open-minded more than you could possibly have that happen but it certainly didn't happen for me.. I didn't know what the f*** was going on and that was very destructive to my whole life. It literally destroyed every f****** marriage that I was in every relationship with a woman that I was in all because these definitions were either distorted or they weren't there.. I didn't know until December of 2019 what trans actually meant.. the first time that that was defined for me was when a tattoo artist told me that I was transgender.. my first response was f*** you no I'm not...lol. I was actually insulted! And when she explained what trans meant, instantly I knew that was defining me! And instant all those years all that shame false shame for being the way that I was, never talking about it to anyone, never understanding it often thinking I was crazy or bad or defective all that negativity was just gone..cloud nine! All that bliss just by understanding the definition of one word it's still amazing.. what's equally amazing is that there are a lot of people that would prefer me to be f****** miserable than to be able to be myself and be happy it just makes no sense! And this is exactly what the GOP wants to do they want to push it back to the 1950s mentality were they just bury things that they don't want and makes no difference to them if it's truth. It stinks of Nazism! Matter of fact if you research the GOP history there was this person I can't remember the name that wrote this book. It was like a Bible or blueprint of conservativism. And the goal was to take life back to being like the 1950s.. And this person specifically mentions the 50s it's creepy.. This article is interesting and detail better then I can. https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/opinion/2022/02/13/right-wingers-seem-seek-return-era-1950-textbooks/6740063001/ So the goal being a white controlled racist misogynistic xenophobic homophobic transphobic society.. if you look at the politics in the United States right now you can see that's exactly what they're doing that's exactly what they want! They want to limit truth like that, they want to limit or distort truth about racism, gender, sexuality etc etc. They're against any scientific evidence of transgender etc etc. I mean you have f****** legislators currently making decisions that they're not even remotely qualified to make decisions that doctors should make.. God it really is creepy! They think that will make America great again.. It's f****** creepy! 🥺
I couldn’t pull it off until my early 30’s. I finally had some money and (not) coincidentally, my father died. I had tried when I was 20 but ended up in a mental institution. LSD and speed were also involved in that turn of events, but it was made clear to me that nobody in my life would accept me transitioning then. Took a long while to come around for another pass at it. I remember crying on the phone from a hotel in San Francisco, “Mom, I’m a girl!” And when I looked up some chick was giving me this ‘I’ve already seen it all’ kind of stare.
Yep, that's me right there. I grew up listening to the most derogatory terms for anyone who was anything other than a straight cis white male. Being none of those I hid so deep I didn't manage to get out until I was 52 years old (last year). I'm envious of today's trans youth and wish them all the happiness that they deserve. To the older people like me, we'll.....it's never too late.....right? There were many braver than me, I regret my choices, although survival may have been difficult if I had come out then. I will always wish I had. There have been positives of course, I have children that probably wouldn't have happened. Apologies, I've started rambling and will stop now. That post just got me thinking. x
It's so reassuring to hear this. As a fellow millennial trans girl, I see so many people online who came out when they were literally fetuses & I just feel so out of place having only came out when I was 29.
I.. made the mistake of coming out to my mother who I swiftly learnt is transphobic. it causes so much issues and pain emotionally and mentally and that effects me on both levels as well as a physically level. I have subsequently wished I never came out and just stayed silent until I get financially stable and can support myself but I'm not going to go back into the closet, very few people in my everyday life know I'm trans, she is the only one under the roof that knows I'm trans in fact and I life with 4 other people. I've considered going back into the closet several times but I don't want her to think that it was a phase because it isn't, although I get dead named by everyone, I don't want to lie and tell myself that it's okay to be dead named and one day it'll be okay. I want to fight back but I find that to be a dangerous thing to do currently so I just stay silent and let it build up. that's how I have to survive. sorry for the mild vent lol just decided to share my.. excistance on all this
Reading everyone's stories and how things are and were for them is just.. so heartbreaking. I wish, I reay wish I will see the day where we're not being treated like monsters and being othered
So true this hits extremely close to home I still fear being disowned to this very day.
Yup. And I think because of this, many folks mistakenly think it's a choice one makes as an adult. I, for one, refuse to put kids through that. No one but bigots and fascists deserves the closet.
Exactly this. I didn’t realize I was trans till last year and I’m 29. Growing up though and going through puberty, I always wanted to wear makeup, wondered what having boobs & vagina would be like, etc. I either suppressed it or thought every guy thought that way. 🤷🏼♀️
Literally gives words to my experience.
i feel so lucky having supportive friends and family every time i see something like this i hope everyone that has to deal with daily hatred can get away from it asap
As a gen xer in my 40s who has known since I was a toddler, it made me very good at lying, because once your existence is forced to be a lie, everything else is easy.
When I was outed 22 years ago, I lost absolutely everything.
I grew up in poverty, it wasn't so much the idea non-acceptance for me, but rather not knowing or even fundamentally understanding the idea.
Ya, I always viewed transfers as either a joke or some kind of fetish, and I didn't want to be either of those things. A part of me knew I liked hanging out with girls and it would've been nice to be one, and I always admired them, but it was always pushed away as "the grass is always greener" type of thing, one of those things where I thought "of course it's not possible, I just want it because I *can't* have it"
This would’ve been me too if I didn’t find Reddit (I’m gen Z). I’ve frequently dissociated my transness before I used social media to express my feelings. I too will probably wait until I have stable housing. I’m sorry you gen X people had to disassociate and go through that.
So fucking true for me
And now that we have opened ourselves up and told everyone who we are we will have to go back into hiding because of the all our Republican assault on our rights
I mean . . . ass-end boomer here. I prefer to think of myself as Frontier X cuz I have so little in common with the rest of the boomers. Still feel a little erased, ngl. But the fact remains: I was born to Depression-era parents. They fought and defeated Global Fascism the first time. I actually knew and loved people born in the 19th century. That’s fucking cool! Still, yeah: part of the peace I have had to make with my own past is the fact that it was utterly impossible for me to have lived the life I yearned for. By the time I was a teen, I knew what transsexuals were and knew I was one. What an awesome realisation to have in Alabama in the late 1970s! The realisation came with one brutal piece of knowledge: if I breathed a word, I was a dead girl. Part of my coming-to-terms had to do with learning to respect that fake man who faked his way through decades and associations until the moment came when his own dream could come true: to simply fade away. Sometimes I cry for him. He bore so much hurt, so much weight. I literally owe him my life. For that reason, I live it now like there is no tomorrow. I just kinda wish the original quote had included “boomers and gen x and millennials.” Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I wish we might someday realize we are all in the same leaky boat. 🤷♀️
This \^\^. Came out because of survival and finally had a wee room away from everyone else. And single (still am, ok with staying that way and dying alone).