When I Was A Little Boy

I'm not sure how old I was when I discovered that boys and girls had different equipment. There was a time when I just assumed that everyone had the same thing. Regardless, the discovery that boys and girls didn't quite look the same had very little impact on my life or my believing that I had been born the wrong gender. At such a young age, genitals just didn't matter that much to me. No, what mattered to me was that boys and girls were supposed to behave differently, dress differently and play differently. For the life of me, I just couldn't figure out why things were the way they were and it hurt really bad inside.



I kept all of this to myself of course because no matter how much I wished it, I was stuck living my life as a boy. Whenever I could, I imagined myself as a girl and did my best to act as much like one as I could. I would prance around all girly, talk in a real high voice and pretend to be any of the girls that I knew. I vividly remember stealing the JC Penney's and Sears catalogs and sneaking off to my room. I would leaf through the toy sections and marvel at the easy bake ovens, dolls and other toys that girls were supposed to play with. It wasn't that I necessarily wanted to play with those toys, but because they were forbidden to me, they became that much more attractive. As I got older, I would use those same catalogs to look through the women's clothing and pick out the things that I wanted to wear.

In school I always preferred to be with the girls and I went out of my way to be included in as many things with them as I could manage. At home it was a different story. The neighborhood that I spent most of my childhood in had a preponderance of boys and absolutely zero girls. It was there that I learned how to be a boy, though I would never stop wanting to be a girl. I would spend most of my free time doing what other boys did, playing football, basketball, baseball and other macho things. By all accounts, I seemed like any other boy growing up in America. For the most part that was true, but I'm pretty sure that most boys in America didn't go to bed at night and cry into their pillows, wondering why in the hell they had been cursed with a body that didn't match the mind.



That was the worst part of all this, the never ending nights of tear soaked pillowcases and never answered prayers from God. It's a horrible existence to know that you are living a lie and can't be who you are supposed to be. A young child just doesn't have the ability to handle such weighty issues and yet everyday in this world, there are tens of thousands young boys and girls going through the same things I went through all those years ago. That any of us manage to grow up and become functioning members of society is nothing short of a miracle. I've said it many times before and I'll say it again, this is a horrible curse and I would not wish this on my worst enemy.

Many years later, I still cry myself to sleep.