Looking back over the years, I can tell you that there's this one thing, one icon in the back of my mind that, well, is the most interesting little nugget of memory. My mother had this plaque made, a small wooden one, with a brass name plate, and a flat, brass silhouette of what was my profile shot at the time. I've looked at that profile endlessly, thinking about how I could pry it off and replace it with a girl's profile. This was probably about 20 years ago or so (given that I'm in my early 30's). I actually have that plaque now, some time ago though I did manage to yank off the profile, but it's velcroed back on.. Note that I did use velcro and not glue.. like I PLANNED to change it someday..
Anyways.. so time moves forward a bit and my life moves on. It's hard, thinking back, to that time with a clear head, trying to say that one particular other moment or another triggered or fell into place that drove me to start wanting to wear women's clothing.. or to think more feminine about many things. I know that my family, or more perhaps my mother, used to talk lightly about how 'If I had been a girl' and so on, and one day she mentioned what my name would have been.. which is my name here, and the name I hope to take someday and hold as my own permanently.
So, my family used to be a bit of an auction-hunting group, picking up boxes and boxes of [who knows what] from here and there, and one particularly large box had a large amount of women's dresses and other clothing. I'm sure you could guess what comes next.
Right about this time, or probably a little before (lets say 13-16yrs), I started to grow my hair out too. Right about here I'll reign this story in and say that within a year of that box's arrival, I was busted for the first time dressing, and that was 'that' for the don't ask don't tell policy for my family. Fast forward about another 10 years and I've still been experimenting with underdressing, not really knowing what's going on internally, but just dabbling here and there. With about 1 good friend, and at the time, my now ex-wife mildly advised of my experimenting, my dressing leaks a little more out of the closet.. and then WHAMMO. Relationship traumas, childbirth, and a few non-accepting SOs later my underdressing is still there, just pretty well hidden in the back of the closet. Fine. As my intro posting I believe declares, my current SO of about a year now kinda found out the hard way, and my dressing was put on a trial-by-fire one-phone-call explanation. Suffice to say that she was 'accepting' generally speaking, though certain allowances made. Since that phone call and discovery by her (she went away for perm. business, but came back less than a month later to a fairly well-shaved-beardless-smooth-legged man) I've now been out dressed many times, have a GID-specialized therapist, a regular support group meeting, and just an aire about me that feels like I've walked into a spring field every moment my mind is given the freedom to just dally about in ladylike ways.
Soooo... there you go.
It's a little on the abridged side, but I hope the nutshell comes across.
