#but we’ve been friends since sixth grade and i’m like. her Trans Friend who she talks to about her opinions on trans issues | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alolanzubat-moving · 7 years

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I read the post about you and your wife can you please tell the story it's so adorable

Aaaaaa, omg, okay, sure~

For those who don’t know, this is based on a post made by @sixpenceee for people to tell the stories of how they met their s/o’s. ^^ My wife is @nari-the-kitty-queen.

Alright, so I had always been an outcast in school, “the weird kid”, ya know? It had been that way since elementary, and it continued my first year of middle school (sixth grade where I’m from starts middle school).

The first day, when the teacher (Ms. L, we’ll call her) called role, I noticed I wasn’t the only one sitting alone/not with a clique. There was one other student who was by herself as well, and thanks to my habit of trying to learn all the names of my classmates, I quickly figured out her name (I’ll refer to her as Miyuki). I wanted to make friends with her, but I was (and still am) super awkward and had literally no social experience at all. So, I went with the first idea that popped into my head: I sat in her seat the next day to see what she’d do. Spoiler: she sat behind me instead of confronting me about being in her seat.

The next day, I sat in the seat she had taken when I took hers, and she sat in her normal seat, putting her in front of me. Well, since this was getting me nowhere, I figured “why not pass notes and see if she shares an interest with me?”. Second best decision of my life. (You’ll learn the first later on in this story.) Back then, my biggest interest was (no surprise) anime. The note I passed her was basically me asking if she had ever seen my favorite anime, Yu Yu Hakusho. Turns out, she actually had! We kept passing notes for the entirety of the class, and it continued the next few days. We ended up becoming really good friends.

Fast forward to the next year. We had gotten heavily into roleplaying (sometimes even writing smut) via the notes we passed one another during school. By now, everyone in the school was aware that we were really close, and there were already rumors spreading around saying that we were lesbians. (This is before I figured out I was trans, so everyone including myself perceived me as a girl.) Now, for those who aren’t aware, my dad was super strict. He was the type who didn’t want his kids to grow up, and that meant he didn’t want us venturing into nsfw area at all, with anything. Double hit for me, because he also didn’t want any of his kids turning out to be gay/lesbian.

Just my luck that he found one of our smut roleplays. I managed to lie my way through it since he couldn’t tell our handwriting apart and thought I was writing this stuff by myself. I got off with a slap on the wrist and him telling me not to continue writing “vulgar material”. My luck worsened when he came across another of our roleplays a few months later and found out I was writing with my best and only friend.

He gave me the third degree, asking me why I’d write things like that with her. I panicked and bluffed, responding with “Well what if I like her?!”. (That is without a doubt the very best decision I have ever made.) He didn’t take the bait and called me on it, telling me “If that’s the case, then ask her out”. He basically cornered me and said that if she didn’t return my “affections”, then I’d be heavily punished - which coming from him meant that I’d have my whole room stripped bear save for my bed and clothes. Yea, my dad was abusive I know. Oh boy did I start panicking worse...

I did have a stroke of luck though. This all happened about two weeks or so before our school’s winter dance. That night, I wrote up a cringey little love note - the kind with “circle yes or no” at the bottom - and gave it to her the next day at school. I was a wreck the whole day, but she confronted me at lunch break and said that she felt the same way and that she’d go to the dance with me, as a couple. I won’t lie, I felt bad for deceiving her like that.

Well, I kept up the facade for a while, going with the flow as things started to happen between us. Sleeping in the same bed grew to cuddling, which grew to hand holding, which grew to nose nuzzling, which grew to cheek kisses, which grew to actual kisses, which grew to fondling, etc. Every step of the way, I kept telling myself it wouldn’t go any further. BOI WAS I WRONG. After about a year or so I started noticing that, oddly enough, I was okay with what was happening.

That August, her mom, T, (who hates me) was planning a huge birthday party for Miyuki. Her mom insisted that she invite this guy named Shannon to the party. Shannon was basically the edgy high school guy every girl wanted to be with. T really wanted Miyuki to be with this guy, really wanted grandkids from the two of them. Well, I had no idea that her mom was forcing her to “break up” with me. It caused a huge rift between us back then.

During the months we were technically broken up, Shannon asked her out and her mom made her agree to it. I hate admitting this, but Miyuki’s mom actually tried coercing Miyuki into sleeping with this asshole when she was only 16. (He was 19 back then, and in our state, a minor can’t be involved with any non-minor more than two years older than them.) Thank God it didn’t work. (I say this because she didn’t want to, not just because I hated the dude.)

Anyway, during eighth grade graduation, Miyuki pulled me aside and told me she was happy I was graduating. She was acting really weird though, and I picked up on it. I’m still not sure if she did it intentionally or not. After the ceremony, my maternal grandmother invited me to go spend my early summer with them a few hours away, and agreed. It was sort of a tradition in my family that me and my brothers go spend summer with them anyway, so it’s not like this was strange.

A few nights into the stay, my aunt (who lives on the same property, pretty much a block away) offered to let me use her phone to call Miyuki like I usually did when I stayed there. None of them knew Miyuki and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms at the time, much less that my dad had forbade me from making any contact with her. Being the little rebel I was, I took the offer. My heart sunk when it rang through to voicemail. I got so depressed that I cried myself into a nap. My aunt woke me up later that evening telling me that Miyuki had called back, so I tried returning the call and got voicemail again. Late, late that evening, she called back on my grandmother’s house phone. We started talking, and things ended up almost the same as they used to be.

Until Shannon called her during our conversation. At first, she ignored his calls to her cell, which is what she had used to call me. He tried about twenty times over the span of ten minutes before he stopped trying the cell and switched to her grandmother’s house phone. (The reason this was bad is because of late it was.) Miyuki’s grandma answered the phone and she (the grandma) told Shannon it was far too late to be calling like he did. After they hung up, he tried that same house phone another two times, only giving up when Miyuki’s grandpa answered the phone and insisted that Shannon stop. Over the next five minutes, Shannon tried Miyuki’s cell number another thirty (I’m not exaggerating) times. At this point, Miyuki told her mom that she didn’t want to talk to him, that he was getting possessive. (He really was, this dude had bad seperation issues and tried guilting Miyuki into sleeping with him.) Her mom pretty much told her to do what she wanted because she was tired of hearing Miyuki’s complaints about him. Miyuki told me to hang on and that she’d deal with it. She put the phone on three way the next time Shannon called, and I took the hint and muted my end so he wouldn’t know I was listening. Boi, when I say she went off, she went OFF.

The conversation (starting with Miyuki, then him, and continuing to alternate) went something like this:

“Hello”“Hey, I’ve been trying to call you.”“Yeah, I know, what of it?”“Are you still coming with me on that family trip?”“Uh, no. I told you that yesterday.”“But--”“Look dude, I’m tired of your crap. You’re controlling. You don’t want me having friends, you whine anytime I’m not in your line of sight, you’re trying to get me to have sex with you even though I’ve told you over and over that I’m doing it, and you cry any time I tell you no. You’re an immature little baby and I don’t want to be with you anymore. We’re done.”

Cue her cutting the line with him and me unmuting my end just in time to say yes when she asked me if I wanted to go back out with her, this time officially.

We’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since then, and almost anyone who knows us knows that we come as a pair - including our families.

The end ♥

#the love story #feel free to reblog this if y'all want! ^^#I've been wanting to share this for so long lmao #she had to help me with some of it #but there it is #retold to the best of our ability #for sixpenceee #Anonymous

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their-misplaced-wings · 3 years

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Long letter to myself about growing up trans without knowing it and accepting myself and sharing bc pride inspired it so #happypride

tw: mentions of self hate, self harm, and some other stuff that might be stressful but it doesnt get specific or graphic

Dear me,

I know Pre-k is scary. I know that you’re worried about change and how much your life is going to be different. Sorry to tell you that happens every school year, and it happens every time there’s a change in your adult life too. It’s okay. I know that when the class is playing house the other kids tell you that you can’t play-pretend to be the dad, the uncle, or the brother so you decide to be the pet- either cat or dog you don’t care. I know that you become friends with two boys and don’t really ever pay attention to the girls in the class unless they speak to you first. I know that you prefer Pokemon, Power Rangers, playing in the creek, and riding the four wheeler to dolls or dress up. I know that even your friends and cousins would tell you that you had to be the pink or yellow Power Ranger when you were playing and wouldn’t even let you pretend to be Blue and you all hated the Blue one. I know it made you want to cry because it was the time you got to pretend to be anyone you wanted and they were still trying to fit you into a role that you didn’t get to choose. I know that you didn’t understand exactly why, because how could you? You were five and everyone told you were a “tomboy” like that was supposed to explain everything. It’s okay.

Dear me,

I know everything became more confusing in third grade when the nice fifth-grade girl became your friend. I know that she was so nice and you thought she was pretty. I know that made you think there must be something wrong with you. Not only because you had a crush but because you wondered why you didn’t look pretty like her if you were both girls. I know that she made you feel like you were an imposter but you didn’t have that word to use to express yourself. I know that you were secretly angry when she told you she had a crush on your neighbor and I know we didn’t know why we were angry at the time so we played the role we were given and encouraged her. I know that you lied when she asked you if you had a crush on any boys. I read our diary about that a few years later and I know we just copied girls in our grade and said we had the same crushes. It’s okay.

Dear me,

I know that fourth-grade is the worst so far. You were told that you had to start being friends with girls and when your friends that had been sleeping over for years slept over now you had to wear shorts to bed. I know you thought they were idiots because why would you and your friend even think that about each other? No one had told you anything yet but there were new rules now because he was a boy and it was no longer appropriate. I know that the girls that you tried to be friends with were mean and made fun of you because you weren’t like them. I know that they made you watch movies you didn’t want to because they were scary and they laughed at you when you cried. I know that they wanted to shop at Claire’s and do their nails and that when they talked you really never listened to them because you didn’t understand.

I know that when you started playing softball instead of tee-ball you felt so incredibly overwhelmed and out of place. I know that when you started to make friends with the other people on the team that liked wearing boys clothes, liked cartoons and playing outside you finally felt a little more at ease and felt like you really had friends since the boys from Pre-K stopped talking to you.

Dear me,

I know that sixth grade is even worse than fourth and fifth. I know that all of the girls you made friends with acted like they had never known you. I know that you loved having your friends from softball at school at least. I know that it changed when your one friend said they wanted to kill themselves so you told your mom. I know that she freaked out and never spoke to you again. I know that until your teacher reached out about joining the DI team you felt so incredibly lonely. It’s okay. I know that you became great friends with a girl that was silly like you and that you spent two years closer than anyone could possibly be, you thought. I know that when she went to high school you didn’t think anything would change. I know that you made another friend who felt and acted like you in your grade and you guys grew so close. I know that they were your lifeline and that you still felt lost. We’re still friends today so really it’s okay.

Dear me,

I know you lost everything including yourself in eighth-grade. I know that you feel like a shell and there is no one around to care. I know that when that man killed your dog you were so beyond broken that we became angry and numb to handle the pain, anger, fear, loneliness, confusion, and self-loathing. It’s okay. I know that the school counselor told you we have Depression and you felt like you committed a crime. I know that we cried and she accused you of proving her right. I know that you were so afraid you were going to be in trouble that you told Her we were fine and the counselor was exaggerating. I know that the poems we were writing were exaggerated versions of the very real truth. I know that the counselor failed so miserably that we no longer trust any of them again.

Dear me,

I know that you never really processed being in ninth-grade, or really tenth for that matter. I know that even though you had been friends for years, your friend that was a year older started to treat you like you were the most annoying person in the world out of the blue. I know that she dug into every insecurity you had about yourself and you still couldn’t hate her. I know you screamed into the woods asking what you did wrong and that you were so afraid to talk to her in case she made you feel worse about yourself. I know it left you confused and hollow even when you thought you couldn’t be any more than you had been for years.

I know that you stared at yourself in the mirror every night, sobbing, scratching, and hating yourself. I know that you wondered why you weren’t pretty and why you didn’t look like other girls or feel like other girls must feel. I know you wondered why no boys liked you and what must be wrong with you. I know you hated your chest. Sorry to say that doesn’t go away.

Dear me,

I know the past few years you wish you hadn’t been born. I know you’re too afraid to hurt the people you love to do anything like that though. I know really you just wish how you’re feeling would just stop for a minute so that you can breathe. I know that eleventh-grade is the hardest academically, socially, and personally so far. I know that you felt like He hated you and was disappointed in you. I know that you were afraid of him and that no one took you seriously. I know that he had a way of looking at you that made you feel five again. I know he never hurt you but his threats were enough to have you living in fear. I know that She was so busy dealing with her own things that She didn’t really see. I know that you carved PERFECT at night because at least you could control that much. I know that you thought something was wrong with you. It’s okay.

Dear me,

I know senior year is big. I know that you were so tired of the fog and the self-hate and the tears that you finally were brave enough to talk to your doctor. I know that all he did was give you a giant prescription and sent you on your way. I know that they start to help but I know that they also start to take away our personality. I know that we start to care less about everything. I know that we feign confidence because the dose is too high and the doctor never bothers to change it or recommend a therapist. I know that eventually we lose that little last bit of ourselves and just start copying others. I know that we don’t care where we go to college. I know that we don’t care what our major is. I know that we really just don’t care anymore. That’s okay.

Dear me,

College really did a number on us. I know that we wanted to feel loved and supported so badly that we didn’t focus on learning. I know that we started talking to every boy we thought was cute. I know that they were all trash bags. I know that the first boyfriend was charming but judged you. I know that we changed to share his interests because then he wouldn’t leave us like our friend had right? I know that we know he cheated on us but we were so insecure that we ignored it or forgave him. I know that he broke our heart. I know that we were so broken again that we let ourselves listen to the next one. I know that we let that one break us more. I know that it felt so great to be needed and loved that we ignored all the signs and the fighting. I know that we let him tell us what to do and how to act. I know that we went off our medication because of his conspiracies. I know you told him you were depressed and he yelled at you. I know that you were as afraid of him as you were for him. I know we left in the middle of the night and he walked to our campus the next day. I know you tried therapy to process the abuse but I know it brought up too many things we weren’t ready to process.

Dear me,

I know that we’re doing so much better now. I know that this One has been helping us heal. I know that he’s teaching you so many things and that we’re starting to understand things about ourself. I know that there are new terms that we’ve learned and new identities that we never even fathomed. I know it’s overwhelming but I promise it’s okay. I know that when you tell the One about ourself it feels like an answer. I know that it was scary to ask him to use neutral pronouns despite knowing that he would understand. I’m so glad that we did. I know that we’re still healing, understanding, and processing everything and that some days are easier than others. I know that we wish we had know all of this about ourself back in elementary school but we have made it this far and we will keep growing. We’ll be okay.

#personal growth #Trans #nonbinary #letter to myself #queer pride #pride month #dear me #growing up queer

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dasklaus · 7 years

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Big wall of text incoming.

This is going to be my first text post on tumblr.

Originally, this was a porn blog. I guess I'm just not that into porn. This is a feelings-dump because I currently have an excess of feelings.

I never talked much about trans issues, least of all about my own. Like many, I keep thinking I'm fake, not trans enough or just weird. That's what I tell people, too: don't mind the male name, I'm just weird about gender. Don't worry about it. I minimize being trans all the time - then again, I truly don't think about it that often. It seeps into my life in small ways, rarely big ones, and I can easily overlook it, distract myself, pretend it's not happening. It's why I haven't transitioned yet.

When I was a kid, I had bigger problems. I had difficulties forming connections with people - still have, to be honest - while desperately wishing for friends - still do, to be honest. I was bullied to varying degrees, changed schools a lot, and regularly got beaten by my older brother while my helpless parents had long patient talks with both of us that didn't change anything ever except made it clear to me that talks were supposed to help but the nice, peaceful environment I lived in just manifested in unusual ways or I just failed to experience it as peaceful. To not turn this into a sob story: I was, in hindsight, really bad at interacting with other kids (in the sense of being an ignorant, arrogant asshole) and didn't take any initiative in solving my own problems, expecting my nice, peaceful environment to manifest itself somehow.

I was raised pretty gender-neutral. My clothes were blue, I waded in lego and books and while I tried to get hobbies like the cool kids did, nothing stuck. As I didn't connect to others naturally and felt a profound otherness (which I mostly attribute to my poor yet snobbish upbringing, my giftedness and - arguably more importantly - my knowing about it), I tended to look for ways to be special, to not do the mainstream thing because I was different, therefore had to do everything differently. When my parents let me choose an instrument to learn I chose drums. Impracticability and long waiting lists took this off the table, so I went for harp. I have no idea what I was thinking.

Being trans feels like that: like a bad choice based on a childish way of looking at myself, on not knowing how to present myself. Like making things weirder for myself on purpose.

I didn't have any clear signs of tomboyishness. I was shy, prone to anger and despair, relentless argueing and both a huge slob and a lover of lists. This is, as far as I can tell, the whole picture - no hidden dreams or interests that put me clearly on the feminine or masculine side of how one might expect a child with strong gender expressions to behave. Gender expressions I did not do.

I vividly remember a neighbourhood friend (the only one that I had and that I adored and looked down on all at once) asking which super power I would like if I were to choose. I went for switching sex at will. Nowadays I'd probably say shape-shifting, but back then, while a lot of things seemed neat, they only appealed to me for money or fame (or advancing science - this was a factor in my appraisal process). This one was the one I wanted for myself, that I would still want even if I had to keep it a secret. This is the only memory I have that tells me something might've been up even way back.

There were some indicators later on that I use to reassure myself. I wanted to go as a man for Fasching (a yearly costume party at school in February) in seventh grade, did, and was mistaken for Charly Chaplin most of the day. There were girls dressed as cowboys, male superheroes and actually Charly Chaplin, and my feelings of specialness faded away, replaced with shame at my generic costume and bitter envy for the people who didn't seem to make anything out of wanting to be boys sometimes.

In eight grade, I started hanging out with the sixth-grade boys, who were closer in age to me, as I started school at five instead of six or seven. Among those kids, a favourite past-time was a kind of wrestling done sitting cross-legged on the ground, both fighters trying to wrestle the other one to the ground. I loved it. Physical contact in general made me nervous, but I took to consensual violence with ease. Being one of the boys, even just for short periods of time, was the best feeling I got out of that time. I changed schools not long after.

I also developed a malformed spine by hiding my growing breasts. I started to hate my body in a way that I had no way of ever fixing.

We went for an excursion to a LGBT resource center. I got hung up on the question of lesbian sex, having started entertaining penis-in-vagina type of fantasies recently that pointedly omitted my own body or presence but were abstract, voyeuristic in nature. Nothing I could imagine girls doing compared to the coming simultaneously while getting physically wrapped up in each other I envisioned. Nonetheless, when asked to sort ourselves into corners of the room based on things like whether or not we've ever been in love (I had not), wanted to have kids (I did, the idea being that I'd live with lots of self-made playmates who all loved me by design) or whether or not we could possibly see ourselves being anything other than hetero, I felt queer. Not necessarily attracted to girls, but queer. I don't remember if I dared go into the queer corner, or whether anyone else did.

In ninth grade, I both fell in love and got a new name. She was the prettiest girl in the world by far, all eyebrows and carefully cultivated elegance, a dark lady of profound thought and inspiration and style, older and wiser and cleverer than I could ever hope to become. I learned her time-table to randomly bump into her between classes, changed my elective course from physics to math to share a class with her and worshipped the ground she walked on. I had a mutual friend tell her about my feelings after she went for a year abroad to the US, to enable her to reject me from a safe distance, which she, of course, did.

My name got discovered in a wallet a classmate won at a biology competition. I've been telling this story for years but recently discovered it was false - the dummy license in it had the last name I chose as my pseudonym on it, but a different first name. I must have chosen that independently. I made my class call me that (male) first name, and even got some teachers on board. A kid in a parallel class we had some course I don't remember with asked me (once, but loudly) whether I'd have surgery. I confidently told him I would as soon as I was eighteen, four years down the line.

The catch is that, while this became common knowledge among the students, I never told anyone. I have, to this day, never actually explicitely come out as trans. I introduced myself with my chosen name, asking not to worry about it. I evaded the rare follow-up question about what it meant. I expressed discomfort at being grouped with girls, having finally found my place among the guys at the new school (if you want a number, my sixth one. Explaining that would take another post of this length). I never talked to my parents, though, nor a doctor. I never said "I want to be a guy" or "I am a guy", I just tried to be a guy best I could - not an especially macho or stereotypical guy, either, just a guy.

That year, we actually watched a documentary at school about trans people. The only thing I remember is a group of fat bearded men sitting around a table and one of them saying he wished he'd have known about this treatment and all this when he was fourteen. That struck a chord. Here I was, fourteen, and now I knew.

Knowing didn't help one bit.

Not knowing what to say, to whom, and how to say it, rightfully suspecting that the people around me didn't know any more than me, I wrote a letter to EMMA, a feminist publication we got at home. I figured they'd know stuff about sex and gender and what to do. They told me to wait and (I told them a bit about myself, including my love for astronomy) that girls can be astronauts, too. While I know fully well that this was meant well, it shattered my hopes of insight and qualified help. I didn't reach out again for more than ten years, when I finally applied for a legal name change (a process that took over four years but got approved recently).

In tenth grade, I developed a crush on a guy. As a large part of my legitimacy in my mind hinged on my attraction to women (the one women I was still very much attracted to simultaneously), this was a problem for me. Still, I made the effort of knocking on his door, stammer out some feelings and getting politely rejected, never having expected anything else.

I found an article about trans men in a magazine. Some were said to help themselves prior to hormonal transition with excessive exercising and anabolic drugs prescribed by their doctor. The next day, I went to the nearest pharmacy and asked for anabolics. The pharmacist took in my fourteen year old weak and tiny physique and started laughing so hard she could not talk. I left red-faced and have never since set foot in that pharmacy again, even though it's the one closest to my home.

Lots of things happened in the following years. After school, I kept the name on the internet and some circles, but didn't dare it in others. I became clinically depressed, mostly for isolation reasons and being generally broken, weird, particular and incompatible with many aspects of adult or even teenager life. I took years working out how to be a person, a work in progress that is less obvious nowadays and much easier, but still there. When the occasional trans thoughts and semi-annually late-night ftm research binges didn't disappear even when I got myself a bit more together, into a successful "hetero" relationship (my first and to this day only LTR) and into friendships who exclusively knew me under my birth name, I felt the growing need to do something about that. I started using my male name with new people and workplaces again. I applied for a name change, which required several visits with psychiatric experts, to whom I lied about my boyfriend, fearing his existence and hetero-ness would influence the verdict, but nothing else.

Being with a hetero man led me to consider hormone treatment as a far-away possibility at best, not for here and now in any case. Fear of being alone again and fear of making myself effectively undateable for no practical gain, fear of regret and fear of the irreversibility of some of the changes made me procrastinate and ignore the issue of where to go from here, long-term.

Now my name is approved, I feel none of the ambiguity and doubt I expected. I spent two weeks feeling nothing but happy about it, showing off my new ID at every opportunity, booking tickets in my new name, informing boss and colleagues, changing my email signature at work and not regretting anything at all. And I think to myself: onto the next step.

Which brings me to today. My euphoria made me call the clinic and make an appointment for hormone treatment (having gotten the necessary info from the experts mentioned earlier). More than a week later, I finally told my boyfriend, who has, so far, steadily ignored any and all gender issues, not caring and feeling enlightened for not caring. And he cannot imagine staying with me through this. And I cannot fault him for feeling that way.

I love him. Being in an open relationship, I'm free to love others, too, which one might think makes it easier, but it doesn't. He is not replaceable. To make matters worse, I just got rejected from the only person that ever made me consider breaking the rules of our open relationship, which hurts hurts hurts like hell but is not something I can really bitch about because I already have someone and wanting someone else is just greedy. We - my partner and I - had plans to marry (now legally a civil union in our case) (he has the prettiest last name in the world, also I want to be with him forever, also taxes and insurance).

I want to spend the rest of my life with him.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a woman.

There is no solution here.

What I really need right now is cuddles and for someone to tell me it will be alright, but I suspect it won't. I don't know how to deal with this.

Thanks for reading.

#personal

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