Beginings are never easy.

Hello out there,

Now where do I start? I was born biologically female, but all my life I have lived in a sort of grey space between genders.

Mostly without even trying I am mistaken for male and I don't really mind to be honest. Sometimes I'm proud of it. Gender to me has always felt kind of fluid, I've never been comfortable in girls clothes, wearing makeup, playing with girl toys. I've always preferred the rough and tumble and directness of boy's I understand their logic, I am comfortable around them.

Girls make me nervous, I don't know how to act around them, I don't seem to understand the verbal or socail cues they expect me to. Maybe that's a result of exposure rather than biology I don't know. Even as a young child I was treated like a boy by other people, people would call me a my father's son etc. I didn't fight that or get upset I embraced it even that young. My mother was a tomboy and saw nothing wrong with my non-girlie behaviour. I am a girl, but not one too maybe that's why I feel out of place.

What this meant as I grew older is that I was left with a question hanging over my head, not just the obvious one that other people asked themselves, is it a man or a woman? But a question in my mind that I have carried with myself all my life, what does this mean to me?

When I was young, in my mind I had no gender I was just me. Admittedly I played superheroes with the boys, not with dolls or my little pony's' but I thought nothing of that. I was different from oher boys physicially, some of those differences frustrated me but generally I could live with them. Funny how looking back and remembering this now accepting that I am of a transgendered nature I get it, I knew the word girl referred to me on some level but in my mind I was a boy which is why puberty was such a shock. My mother prepared me for the whole thing with a detailed chat on what was going to happen but again somehow I just didn't feel like it applied to me. I thought I'd be the way I was forever.

I think could of lived with most things, but the day I started growing breasts was quite possibly the worst day of my life. And as if life had a personal vendetta against me I wasn't one of those girls who was going to always complain about their lack of endowments ( I would of so been happier with that ) I had all the curves not in excess but in abundance. I could no longer deny my gender it was there right in front of me whenever I looked down, and other people could see it too and all of a sudden I was a girl and me no more. I know it must seem a trivial thing, but for me at the age of 10 or 11 it was like my body had rebelled against me, betrayed me. And I began a long walk down the road of ignoring my body, I just simply pretended it wasn't there anymore. I didn't look in mirrors and I didn't look after it.

So now I was a girl in everyone elses eyes I could not deny it, could not blur the lines and slip between like I had before. I was trapped, locked in and without escape. I was put in dresses, sent to an all girls school where I felt very alone. A few girls I met I bonded with because of their boyish nature but we were all girls there and growing up to do what girls do, get married and have kids was what everyone was about. What we were all expected to do and most girls seemed happy with that. They all talked about boyfriends and getting married, how many children they wanted. They also talked about careers and what they wanted to be when they drew up I must add but all of that seemed secondary to the whole meeting a man and getting married bit. For a while I worked on accepting that, there were no alternatives really available to me in that life. I like most young girls accepted that that must be what lifes' all about, but something still nagged at me and I think it must of shown as grew older less and less of the girls I had met there kept my company. I became a loner, not ridiculed or excluded actively, just not sought out for company. I was strange and different and that made them as uncomfortable around me as I was them. Having said that I did still have a great time there, I was sporty and they had loads of sports to keep me occupied and it was a good school. Just this feeling sitting there in the back of myself never left me this, not quite right feeling.

It was also the first place I came across the word lesbian, one girl in my class was teased ruthlesly for being one though at 11 I doubt she actually had made that decision yet. It was more just a word girls could use to be cruel and hurtful to her for not being pretty enough or something. Looking back now I should of actually talked to her about it but I lacked maturity and in my desire to fit in didn't want to start bringing attention to myself by association with her ( sounds terrible I know but these are the thoughts of my childhood ) This did though introduce me to a new type of possibility for my future I started to consider the word homosexual. I learnt the word, what it meant but that was about all. It didn't scare me or shock me it was just something else if anything it felt kinda comfortable in my mind. At this point I should probably mention that I have an incredibly liberal family and this allowed me to find the space to do this at a young age I know there are people out there who don't get the chance to ask these questions until much later and I am deeply grateful for my family.

Then a few years later I had a stroke of luck and we moved my very colonial environment to London, city of opportunity. Where peoples are as diverse and varied as snowflakes. I was terrified.