I posted two videos on YouTube today! One sort of shows what I used to look like--perhaps I overdo it, but... you know... drama!--and then shows my transition over the last four months--all in pictures. The next one, entitled "Growing Up As One Of Jehovah's Transsexuals: Part 1"--again...drama--is pretty self explanatory, I think. Here I begin to touch on what I dealt with growing up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses while also realizing, from and early age, that I had gender dysphoria, or what they called until recently "gender identity disorder."
One thing I would like to share, that I forgot to add in that video, is that I completely understood what I was from the time I was in elementary school. I suppose its one thing to do what I said in the video, dress up in your sisters clothes and say you want to be a girl. Sure... it really could just be a phase (and, like I said, it will only hurt children more to get angry and try to prohibit these feelings and actions, effectively robbing your children of that developmental stage in their life). But it is another thing entirely, as an elementary school child, to be searching so hard to understand yourself that you are able to discover a psychiactric description of what you feel: Gender Identity Disorder.
From that time forward, it wasn't a matter of denying that about myself, it was a matter of supressing it--begging Jehovah, the Supreme God, the most powerful of the universe, on a daily basis, to either change me or to help me not feel that way. Perhaps I should have been appealing to the God of the multiverse instead; OK yes, I know--very corny and nerdy--I'll stop now.
Moving on, of course, there was the incredibly soothing and strengthening experience of trying to live as a male Jehovah's Witness, doing all the things that entails, when you know you are, in fact, a woman. Seriously though, the reason their are more women in the organization than men is because they really have no expectations for women in the organization. They're not allowed to have any priveledges in the congregation, except, yes: preaching and marrying elders. So I guess--for a bit--while I was trying so hard to throw myself into the Jehovah's Witness male lifestyle to try and cleanse myself of my dysphoria--I might have even been, not happy, but at least accepting that I wasn't a biological woman--content that everyone's life in this organization appeared to be hell too and that at least I had buku opportunites to get on top! I even began to think and tried to consol myself this way:
"You know, I bet all guys feel this way. All guys secretly think they are women, but put out this rough exterior."
Of course I did come to understand, later, that was completely not true.
But the mild resignation and acceptance--I think that's the wrong word to use, but its the best one I can come up with right now--this didn't mean I was free, I was just as trapped, and I saw no way out and no way of comfort but through following their rules. I still felt the same, overwhelming and uncontrollable feeling, underneath it all. I can't even really describe it beyond saying that suppressing my dysphoria was like having a mental geyser. Eventually, in cycles, I couldn't hold back anymore, and I would do what I was trying not to do. I would dress up. I would put on make up. I would even secretly take hormones. Because it made the depression and the stress of keeping it all inside--it relieved it somewhat.
At 15 to 16 after passing through a deep, deep depression, after thoroughly considering running away from my terible life and trying to begin my transition, after getting so upset that I tried to--cover your eyes--mutilate myself... you know... down there... It was after I recovered from that sad peroid of my teenage years--still unbeknownst to my parents--that I began to think that sex--which for a Jehovah's Witness, means marriage--might be the answer. It would surely man me up. But that tale, my beautiful people, is for Part Two.