Memories

Following a recent visit to a psychiatrist and reading back on some notes from my assessment it has left me remembering a lot of things from my childhood.  Including something I forgot to tell on that occasion.  But weirdly the more I remember things about being young I find myself thinking that a lot of things really do make a lot of sense and I have always been uncomfortable being female.  Or identified as such.

For example the very first time I got into trouble at school was when I was aged 6.  I had been swimming and I remember I hated wearing a crop top as well as swimming trunks.  I just liked wearing trunks and having a bare chest like the boys.  My Mum did get me a crop top but for a long time I hid it in my bag and once I was 'caught' hiding it by one of the parents and I did my swim as per usual and when we got back to school and had what was known as 'carpet time' I was told to stand up in front of everyone.

My teacher asked me why I didn't wear my swimming top and also added was it because I "wanted to be a boy?" He also told me that other people noticed that I had hidden my top and that I wasn't a little boy and I was a little girl and that I should cover my chest.

I remember crying, and also the I felt a weird feeling of that it wasn't fair that I wasn't a boy.  Later that year I stopped wearing skirts as I did keep saying I wanted to be a boy.

When I got to age 7 in a school play I was made to wear a skirt for 10 minutes and I cried so much they let me wear trousers in the end.  I hated the trapped feeling that wearing a skirt left me feeling, even though it was part of a costume. 

Now when I remember all of this it makes sense. 

I also hated that boys would chase girls wearing skirts and the vulnerability attached to a few other things I don't really wish to divulge. The main feeling that wearing girls clothes gave me was that it was wrong.  Massively wrong. 

Even when age 9 and I had to wear a skirt for school when I moved to London I used to pretend in my mind that I was a boy.  Even though throughout these years I always had very long hair, it would be tied back and I always saw a boy looking back at me.

But this boy was an almost imaginary friend that I looked at every day in the mirror.

I knew by that age I always wanted to have a wife one day and in my mind I would be someone's husband. I even decided in my minds eye that I would do the laundry and cook the food and then (this was when playing) I would tuck up all my cuddly toys in my bed and then cuddle with my giant cuddly toy elephant wife.  (That was my wife at the time).

Shame we didn't talk much but she was nice to hug.

I had little concept of homosexuality in those days.  I also found it very fascinating to watch men and women walking on the street.  I always preferred that men had quiet shoes and women had noisy high heels.  I never envisioned myself to be wearing heels.  Nor wearing make up.

Anything girly around me I always thought was something for girls whilst I felt the awkwardness that a young boy would have felt.

I loved watching my Mother put on make up every day, yet at the same time I never thought she and I would do make up together.  I never felt like her little girl, but at the same time I knew I wasn't a real boy.

Luckily I had a Mum that liked playing computer games too and didn't mind that I preferred that to Barbie.  She never conditioned me to be feminine, yet she knew I was one of the more sensitive children.

I also remember clearly that I didn't feel like I fitted that well with people at primary school.  I just wanted to be alone. With some groups of people I knew I felt some friendship with, yet at the same time I liked doing my own thing.  I always felt older too and was more drawn to older people. So I would sometimes hide in the building and read. Or read to younger people.

I was caught a few times but for the most part nothing that bad happened other than once being shouted at and me being such a daft creature at that age feeling convinced that the teacher would hate me forever. I really did have a black and white mind at that age.  I still remember the tempo an the intensity of my heart beating heavily in my chest because I was in trouble.

Even now I hate being in trouble, as the stress is horrible.  But I have learned that people do forgive things and won't be angry forever.

Generally.