High School Experience's

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From: Krystal
Subject: HighSchool

Well i my story is a little long but i can only think of one way to tell it and that is all of it. I have had a feeling about my issues for as long as i can remeber. I useed to play with this girl that lived next to me untill she moved away in 3rd grade. We were friends but a lot of the boys would make fun and when she left i was kinda left alone. I really never had a way to escape and school was horrible for me. I remember crying in first grade on the first day and then 3 of the boys dug into me until i got kicked out of that school in 8th grade. Those years are so horrible, i tried to kill myself more then once because of these boys. They hated me because i was different.

Once i got the middle school for about half a year i still had no friends but this was now public school instead of private and a lot more people meant a lot of more space to get away from things. Although i remember being picked on by the jocks once. They all sat around me and had fun making comments or hitting me. I broke down there which was not good.

High School brought a lot of feeling up, i started realizing my fantasy that i wanted to be a girl, more so that i was a girl. I felt bad about all this and hated myself for it. I was never able to express myself until a computer game caught my eye. EverQuest! an on-line world where my character in this D&D game was female and i still play her to this day. My high school years are full of memories of the joys i had in this game, being able to be as girlish as i ever wanted. i still felt bad doing anything in real life until the beginning of my fourth year. I had to know why i was so oppressed my entire life with girls and why i hated sports, guy things, and even staring at the girls in my school. I finally found out in the past few weeks and now i am faced with more problems. I fear these challenges ahead of me but i need to do something more. I have always been a recluse, emotionally and even in the cloths i wear. I want to come out but i need to finish high school and find a way to tell my parents. I will wear this guise of a boy for a little longer but i can't keep it up for much longer now that i know the truth.
 
 

From: Natasha
Subject: HighSchool

Oh Highschool was a horrid experiance for me.  I hated it from beginning to end.  I could never really fit in.  Deep inside I knew that I was a girl and wanted to hang out with the girls.  I felt absolutely trapped inside a male body that I hated with even greater passion than Highschool itself.  I never really made any friends, of either gender.

I was seen, I guess, as an outcast in a sea of people conforming to well established norms.  I participated in annual staff and the school newspaper instead of going to PE.  The boys thought of me as a little wimpy person.  I'm just over 5'6" and a little over 125 pounds.  Not much has changed except my wieght which I have managed to bring down to about 110 pounds :-)

Being seen as a male, I wasn't allowed to be part of the girl-clique which I longed to be a part of.  So I kept my distance and was quiet and reserved.  I do have a very understanding Mother who means the world to me, as I haven't seen my father since I was five years of age.  I came out to her one afternoon during my the
Christmas vacation of my 10th Grade year.  To my great shock, she was not only calm and collected, but she said that "She knew (that I longed to be a girl).  This changed everything for me.

I started dressing at home and would be "Tasha" from the time I came home from school in the afternoons till I went again in the mornings; and for the entire
weekend.  Coming home from school on the "big cheese" I would just think to myself "I can't wait to get home and get out of these ugly boy clothes and into a cute skirt, stockings, and heels."  I lived this double life for two years until I couldn't take it anymore and dropped out of school.

Later, after I had started HRT and things were beinging to come together.  I took the GED the week my name was legally changed to Natasha.  Later, I enrolled myself in a community college and completed my AA, and now I'm working on my BA.  I have read that many MtoF TS tend to be less feminine, some in dress and others in mannerism.  I'm completely diffrent in that I absolutely love being a girl and being extremely feminine.  I love those things that many women think of as drawbacks.  I love fixing my hair and spending time putting on my make-up; I love wearing heels and stockings; I love looking my absolute best and getting looks and winks from cute guys.  I'm a heels and dresses kinda girl and that's the way I like it.  I'm 23 now and on track for my GRS this Winter and I can't wait.

Love ya all,
Tasha

P.S.  I couldn't have done it with out you Mother *hugs & kisses* :-)
 

From: Kevin B.
Subject: High School

I got singled out. I was called Lesbie, and LesboMania, and they always thought I was younger than I actually was. I had problems with swimming classes (I wanted to use boxers and nobody would let me) and the use of bathrooms... girls didn't want me in theirs and boys in theirs...

I changed school, went to a much bigger one and became popular only because I talked to people who were not in my classes. Still had problems. I became a bookworm and a loner, and totally went into sports. My grades were disastrous, they had my IQ tested by the school and said I had above-average IQ... I was flunking all mid-term exams. Repeated grade 9, too. Had a major risk of never going to college that way, 'coz of my final exams... my grades were every year worse.

My teachers and my parents gave me the toughest times, but I managed to move out. Friends have always seen me as a guy, and I'm grateful for that.

I suppose there is no good way to live it, if they don't understand how hard it is for you. Luckily I moved away from Italy (I was in a U.S. school overseas) and am back home now. :-)

Kevin
 

From: "Phoebe"

Hi, this is a response to the question of how things were in middle and high school, and I'd like to share my experience.

I was always much smaller than the other boys, and I never really felt like one of them. I was pretty effeminate, not athletic, shy. I didn't date anyone in middle school or high school. I used to get teased by my friends a lot. This started in grade school and went on until I graduated high school. They used to tell me things like I was "such a girl" or that I "should have been born a girl". They used to play cruel jokes on me to embarrass me in front of other people too. I was very depressed in high school and suffered from stomach aches just about every day. Of course, my GID was at the forefront of my mind.

How did I deal with it? Hmmm...I guess I kept to myself mostly, and tried to keep busy with hobbies that would take up a lot of time. Things like building models, drawing, reading, stuff like that. It wasn't much of a life.

Phoebe =)
PS: I'm a 31 year-old M2F (obviously) TS...

From: Lisa
Subject: High School

Oi everyone

I repressed a lot of my memories from elementary and middle school. Elementary was ok because i had some friends and they would stick up for when it mattered but things changed for me when i went into middle school. The friends that i had went to a different middle school so i was all along to deal with myself, from what i remember i was in 3 fights in 6th i didn't lose any of them which helped me out a lot i guess but it was hard for me because i didn't like fighting i would just get pushed to far.

At home during 6th was worse for me because i was starting to horde my siblings clothes and my mom was always finding stuff she would tell my dad who would then beat the crap out of me but after a couple years she stopped telling him. By the end of 6th i still didn't have many friend that were close they were the type of friends that were my enemies when i turned my back . This led to a lot of paranoia.

In 7th grade things were hard and easy everyone knew who my sister was and how the 2 big football players in 9th grade had my back. So less things happened but the verbal abuse must of continued and I remember a lot of crying and a lot of assault from my dad this by the summer of 7th i was going to a psychologist .

She told my family that my dressing was normal and that i had gender dysphoria. Well that was not what they wanted to hear so I got pulled out of it the summer was really boring I had a job for a bit I didn.t really know what I was yet either or why I wanted to be a girl I just knew that I hated what I was. Oh another thing from 7th was I got into another fight I won the kid couldn.t even land a hit (I'm glad I had the karate for 7 years or kids would.ve really took advantage of how weak I was) after he fell I started crying hysterically, none of the people watching could figure it out they just said supporting things I was able to collect myself after a bit but that was only till I got home.

The principals were always nice to me because they always found out what the kids would say to me. This was also around Columbine time so I think they were also glad I did not go on a killing spree.

8th grade arrived I had some more friends I got jumped a lot but the kids who would jump me would always defend me when the popular kids said something. The kids who would jump me were the poor kids so my school was really half-poor half-rich I was at the upper poor.

It was eighth that I started smoking pot on occasion and drinking not much but every so often, 9th grade was when things loosened up I met a kid who just moved to PA who was intimidating. He and I used to mess around and build bombs and other things when kids at the school started hearing about this a lot of tension-loosened people were cautious to say things or do anything because they were scared. I do not blame them.

Well that summer John and me smoked a lot of pot and at the end, he had to move away. Tenth started everyone had there own group even me I hung out with the mallrats. Everything was easier on me, I found many friends in different groups people seemed much calmer (mainly because like 90% of the school were potheads). Therefore, everyone was too relaxed to be assholes and they people that were dicks usually did not have any friends. So that was really 10th. I started really getting into punk music at the end of tenth.

11th came and I was hanging out mainly with the punks and skin they were all ok but by the end of the year I started realizing that were not really punk they dressed in the style but there were never at any shows they were just playing a role to be different. I also started to play guitar and writing songs.

Then 12th my final grade as far genders been I realized that I was TS I was starting to act a little bit more feminine but I.m cautious I know how to be a "guy". I started going to a psychologist and when my psychologist told my mom that she wanted her to go to a support group my mom took me out at this time.

I met a girl named Sarah we started dating she was great but after 3 months she broke up with me she went lesbian and after she dumped me I came out to her turns out she is incredibly accepting I did lose a girlfriend I loved but I did gain a best friend I love.

12 grade was definitely the best of all my many years so I should end here I.m 18 I.m currently looking for a psychologist to start the physical part of transition and my life is all and all good with the occasional downs instead of vice a versa .

Well that's my story
Lisa

From: Janelle (Janie)

I wanted to write something for the Antijen www page because I want people to know that coming out in middle school and high school, even when you have a lot going for you, can be hard and has a downside too. I think I was born a pretty extreme case of what a m2f trans kid can be... by the time I was in the ninth grade I had been through some of "the usual crap" at 2 schools but ended up in a really terrific school where I was mostly accepted without too much of a blink. By that I mean I wore my hair long, always wore earrings and had a name that could be either a boy or a girl name and people who didn't know me didn't pay any attention to me because they assumed I was a girl. In my own class, I was liked and really got more positive feedback about who I was more than anything negative. My best friend told me that she thought most people accepted that I was just being myself because I had a sort of natural quality that people liked. Which made me feel really nice 'acourse.

The thing is though when you are a Trans teen you have to do something and I did, at six months before I graduated ninth grade. I had figured out when I was 12, or I should say it just became obvious to me, that even though I liked boys I was not gay, and that I wanted to be a girl completely. My older sisters ganged up on me one day in the bedroom and flat out asked me if I wanted to be a girl and I answered yes. Before then I'm not exactly sure how I thought of myself - I think mostly that I just didn't. Sooooo, I figured out on my own how to get an estrogen called Estinyl, how much I should try taking, and I did. This is the single most significant thing I ever did in my life so far, even more than surgery which was really nothing in one way, though everything in another. I did it without thinking at all about consequences and I know now that I could have lost everything I wanted even though it seemed like it was the thing to do to get everything that I wanted, which was true also. I think that is the truly hard part about coming out very strongly when you are a young teenager. And it really really sucks. The Estinyl affected me very strongly and fast so that near the end of the year I'd been informed by the boys that I was no longer welcome in gym, which was just fine with me. After the school nurse sent me home one day I told my mother, who already knew what I wanted. My sisters had blabbed immediately of course. However, she didn't know what I had done with the Estinyl and the caca really hit the fan then. I became the huge family problem and my mother went totally nuts trying to find a qualified doctor and therapist for me over the summer. My father acted like an idiot and my parents separated that summer.

After two duds, my mom and I found someone who had some experience with GID though none with anyone as young as I was. That was a problem but I just had to make do. I had broken "the rules" by starting on hormones on my own - my argument was who cares, all girls start on hormones on their own anyway. But what could anyone do? The choices were to kick me out, lock me up or help me be myself and everyone went with #3. I could not pass as a boy and so it was decided that I'd go live with my aunt and uncle 200 miles away and try and start HS enrolled as a girl, which my shrink and mother were able to accomplish by talking to the principal and others at the small town HS and presenting all the facts about what my doctor called a medical condition.

I was so happy because it worked and things went really well for five months of that school year until somehow the local news media found out that there was a "boy" going to HS as a girl and things just disintegrated completely as far as my having anything resembling a normal life then. The local paper called my aunt and uncle and asked for comment and then they told me and I felt weird like a house had fallen on my head. My friends and the family told me I didn't need to go to school on Monday but I did anyway. My friends especially were just terrific and there for me and if anyone else had any problem they kept it to themselves, but it scraped completely anyway. My picture was in the paper and on the local news and my situation became this big controversy about who and what I was. People who had never even met me wrote to the school board and the papers, etc. No one could understand that for some reason I had been born someone who seemed like a girl, the opposite sex from what I was supposed to be and that it was really all I wanted to be as much as I possibly could. I just wanted to be myself.

Everything went down hill very fast then and I ended up pulling out of the tenth grade just a month before I would have finished. There were things said and written and things were made hard on me in ways that I couldn't handle at all, even though I tried. I studied at home and got my GED when I was 17.

Even though it is acceptable in Thailand to do surgery for someone like myself at 16 my shrink would not ok me. I guess this went against the standards of care at the time but it is completely unfair since I would have been "full time" for over a year at 16 as well as on hormones for almost two years then. I felt like I was being punished and pushed hard into a place where I couldn't win and no one would give me an honest answer why. It was incredibly hard to be a normal 15 to 18 Year old girl on the outside and yet not be able to really live my life as a normal teenager. It made me nuts even though I did everything I could do to stay focused and not lose heart. I wasn't really my usual upbeat self and had depressive episodes that just hurt really bad and recurring nightmares about everything being taken away from me. I ran away for six months when I was 17. I would not have been able to make it without my mom, sisters and brothers, my friends and the people who took an interest in me and helped. Music helped me a lot too.

I'm 20 now, and I started college at 18, and things improved a lot from having a more normal social life again. Yay. Ten months ago, I went to Thailand and had surgery with Dr. Sanguan. Yay again. While in no way problem free, heaven forbid, my life has really been going well since and I know it is a trend, which will continue.

So that is my story of what it is like coming out in middle/HS, with more advantages than most people have. I guess the point I would like to make is that Trans kids are people first and Trans second. Our lives are not just little cartoon pictures of what it is like to "pass" (a word I hate) and "transition", another word I don't like all that much, at wonderful age X. It is expected that being a Trans kid will be hard in some ways, many kids go through much harder things all the time really. Fine. What makes it so much harder though is the complete lack of understanding that coping with attitudes about being trans is really a thousand times harder than simply being trans and solving the problem, which in many ways really would not be that big a deal if there were just a bit more understanding.

Janie

From: Julia
Subject: HighSchool

I was always made fun of. Whether it was because I was Jewish, acted weird, or picked my nose, I always got made fun of since I started public school in 1st grade.

It got worse and worse through middle school and high school. There was this one kid who always made fun of me. He wasn't much himself. Self proclaimed trailer park trash, scrawny, not many friends, he really just had self esteem problems, and found someone just one rung hiugher, me, to make fun of to make himself feel better.

All through high school everyone made fun of me. I would always dress up as a girl for Haloween, making for more talk.

The one saving grace was that I was, and still am, a big sports fan and a/v geek. I produced all the sports programming for the school district's vcable access TV station. The jocks had to be nice to me or their team got less air time. So, that kept me from getting physical beatings.

I really didn't come out to myself as being transsexual until I was 19, but all through Elementary, Middle and high school, I dressed up at home and out and about and felt at ease. I had one friend who I told. We're still friends to this day.

Julia,
Norristown, PA

From: Melonie
Subject: HighSchool

Hiya, Emma and everyone else! ^_^

I'm currently 19 and thus, out of school, but I have a bit of a story from my junior/senior high years. Ever since kindergarten, I knew the difference between boys and girls, and that there was something different abut me. I looked like one of the boys, though maybe a bit smaller than most. But I saw the boys playing with their typical rough-and-tumble manner, and knew that I wasn't like that! I liked playing with the girls, they never fought and had neater toys anyway. But the teachers saw this, and asked me why I didn't want to play with the boys? I replied (ah, the innocence of youth, I had no idea what I was getting into) that I didn't want to play with the boys because I didn't want to be a boy. I wanted to be a girl! Of course, the teachers didn't go for this, not one bit. They MADE me play with the boys, but I just always got hurt and started crying. THEN I'd get admonished for crying, because "boy's aren't supposed to cry." I TRIED to explain it to them, but did they listen? Noooo... The teachers just decided that I was too much trouble, so they kicked me out of the class (it was a private class run by the college). So off to public school I went, and the patterns continued. But this time, they didn't just give up on me. The teachers decided I was just being difficult, so they set out to straighten me, by punishing me every time I did something that boys weren't supposed to do. By the end of kindergarten, the teachers would gather all of the students into a circle, with me standing in the middle, and they'd have a vote as to what my punishment for the day would be. I couldn't take all the embarrassment, so I would just cry more, which would warrant more punishments... You get the picture.

But I was smart, and learned fast. I decided that I'd just pretend to be a boy so everyone would leave me alone. So I managed to struggle through kindergarten, rather uncomfortable, but at least safe, in my pretend role as a boy.

In first grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD (to this day I still have my doubts about that diagnosis), and the school pushed my parents toward putting me on Ritalin. They told my parents that it would cure me of my "difficulties". Now, I wasn't the best actor back then, so I tended to overcompensate. I'd be aggressive, and very active, and supposedly Ritalin would be a magical panacea to "fix" me. Oh, it stopped my "delinquent" behaviour, to the point that I just stopped feeling. Ritalin affected me so badly that I lost all traces of personality and uniqueness. Now, fortunately, my parents are very supportive, and when they saw their baby slipping away from them, they took me off of Ritalin right away. Of course, the delinquent behaviour continued, and I was eventually labelled as "challenged". This couldn't be further from the truth, though! I was very bright, but one of my observations about boys is that being too smart wasn't something that the boys did. So I slacked off, I didn't pay attention, I did whatever I could to fit in. And, of course, my grades suffered. By 6th grade, I was constantly depressed, because I wanted to get good grades, but I didn't want my cover to be blown, either. I witnessed an increase in violent and destructive behavoiur among the boys, so I knew if they found out my "horrible secret" (the teachers were very effective in convincing me that what I was doing was unnatural and sinful, and this thought was so deeply ingrained into my mind that I didn't dare make a single slip), I would probably get hurt.

Of course, I couldn't keep up the charade forever. starting Junior High in 7th grade, we had to change in the locker rooms for gym class... I was late to develop, so I got plenty of foreshadowing of what was going to happen to me. I didn't have any disillusions about what was going to happen to me, I knew m body was a boy's, and seeing all the other boys go through adolescence around me was horrifying, to know I would go through a similar process soon enough, losing any trace of sexual ambiguity I may have had.

7th grade was also when my act started to slip a bit. My mannerisms started subconsciously reverting back to a more feminine pattern, and the boys caught onto this IMMEDIATELY. I was pushed into lockers all the time, tripped at the lunchroom, things were stolen from me, things were broken... And then there were the beatings. After school, I had to walk home most of the time. I can't count the number of times I was followed, cornered, and beaten horribly. I always had an excuse for when I got home (the bullies always said "if you tell anyone, we'll kill you"), something like "I fell on the sidewalk" or "we were playing sports and I got hit with the ball". I hated to lie to my parents, they were always so supportive and loving, but I just couldn't risk further inciting the bullies' wrath. This pattern of beatings and bullying continued well into high school. By this time I was well aware of my condition, and was reading as much about it as I could. After 10th grade, my parents (who were of course aware of what was really going on with the injuries, but had no idea of my gender dysphoria) sent me to a boarding school. It was a school for boys only, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. But there were a lot of friendly people at that school, who were sympathetic and always willing to help me out if someone was giving me a hard time. I only ever told one person about my GD, he was actually my boyfriend, H. He was a tall, strong man, about a year younger than me but almost a foot taller. And by this point, I had grown up to be just shy of six feet tall. Though, fortunately, I've always had a delicate frame, so I've never had the broad-shouldered, football player physique (though I would like to shed a few pounds, that's another story altogether).

H was very sweet and gentle, always spoke softly and kindly. Around winter break of my senior year, he came out to me, he was visiting me in my dorm room as I was cleaning up, and someone made one of the frequent "gay" jokes to another student. He whispered in my ear that he was gay, I just smiled and replied that I was bisexual, so I sort of knew how he felt. After the break, we came back to the school, H and I quickly fell in love and had a wonderful relationship. Of course, it had to be kept secret, because most of ths school wasn't all that friendly toward anything other that hetero. It took a lot of courage to admit that I was a transsexual, because, well, gay men are only interested in other men, and telling him that I'm really a woman inside might be a bit of a "turnoff". Of course this was not the case, he was EXTREMELY supportive, and loved me just as much. Of course, I would joke with him that he must be bisexual, because of me, and he'd just reply with "hey, you're the one exception to the rule!" We were rather intimate, which was difficult as the walls were very thin and we had to be VERY quiet. But we managed, and to this day only a handful of people know about the relationship H and I had, and all of those were after graduation, through instant messages and E-Mails.

Toward the end of my senior year, I started acting more feminine by stages... Noone really noticed, but it made me feel a lot better. This was also around the time I was getting heavily into RPGs and Anime, so everyone probably just thought I was a nerd or something. I didn't care, and RPGs offered an avenue for me to become whoever I wanted! It was such a welcome release! By the time I graduated, my grades had been brought back up to As and Bs, and my overall self-esteem skyrocketed. During my senior speech, I told the audience that I was very grateful for having a chance to turn my life around and be who I wanted to be, and I actually became a bit teary-eyed as I walked off the stage as I got a thunderous round of applause. The speech was only 5 minutes, but it felt like so much more, I poured my heart into writing that speech, and it showed.

After graduation, I went to college for a bit, but that's outside of the realms of this essay. If there are requests, I'll go into my post-graduation story a bit, but for now I think I've gone on long enough.

Take care, and keep that chin up!

-Melonie

From: Becky Anne
Subject: HighSchool

At the Junior High level (i.e. 12 or 13) were you singled out as "different"?

Junior high, starting around 7th or 8th grade, was the worst period of my life. The school system I went to was unusual. Junior high was 7th through 10th grades and I think kids were at the most immature and cruelest stage during these years.

I'm not sure why this started but I started getting called "fem" by some of my male classmates. These were the days before backpacks so the boys carried their books under their arms traveling between classes. Some would come up behind you and slap the books out of your hands and the notebook and books would fly across the hallway.

In gym I was always among the last picked for teams and in shop class I struggled to finish the easiest projects.

I don't recall being effeminate in school. I certainly was no jock, but I didn't act like a girl. Still something was picked up by the other kids and once I became a target it didn't improve till I moved on to high school.

How did you respond at the time?