Found A Well Written Article On Being TG

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I am a woman. For this, I am called a liar.

I am not a liar.

To the edge and back

I’m transgender, meaning the gender that was assigned to me at birth doesn’t match the gender I identify with. For most of my life, I couldn’t articulate this feeling in a coherent way. 

I started struggling when puberty hit, around age 12. I watched as my body turned what felt to me grotesquely masculine, and my mind began to feel as though it was in a fog of testosterone. My brain was like a Camry someone had tried to fuel with diesel — it wasn’t meant to run on testosterone. I wished I could be like the other girls in my class. Something just seemed right about who they were, how they were. 

I sank into a depression that lasted for years. I didn’t understand why. I tried therapy, anti-depressants, anti-convulsants, and anti-anxiety medications. They didn’t help. I finally gave up trying to fix it. I thought there was nothing I could do.

At age 26, after years of repressing these feelings, the dissonance between my mind, body and life itself became too much to handle. Every morning I woke up feeling more shame and anxiety than ever before. I took up smoking, a habit I’d kicked nearly two years prior. I couldn’t sleep without drinking, and I often drank until I couldn’t walk. Still, the feelings persisted. I considered suicide.

Then in late May of 2012, I came out to my girlfriend of 5 years, pouring my heart out, doing the best I could to explain the toll that ignoring this has taken on me. It’s a hard thing to put into words. 

By that October, after months of working with a therapist specializing in gender-related issues, I had begun hormone replacement therapy. Simple enough. I took medication to reduce the testosterone in my system, the very hormone that had nearly destroyed me, and I gave myself a weekly injection of estradiol, one of the more common forms of estrogen found in pubescent and post-pubescent women.

A few months later, I’d begun to experience the physical and mental impact of the hormones, and with it a new sense of clarity, peace and happiness. The chronic aches in my joints and pains in my stomach that had been a staple of my life since puberty dissipated. My mind and body began repairing themselves. It’s as though my brain was meant to run on estrogen my whole life.

But why?  I know who I am

I am a woman, but on such a frequent basis, I’m told this is not true. I’m told that I’m “genetically” or “biologically” male. I’m told that I’m not a “real woman.”

I have to ask: What constitutes a “real woman?”

READ IT ALL AT: 

 http://www.bustle.com/im-a-transgender-woman-and-this-is-what-its-like