A Brief History About Me Growing up as Trans!

*Warning: Some people may find this article graphic or triggering in a way. If talking about Suicide or describing suicidal attempts makes you uncomfortable or triggers you in anyway then I recommend you don't read this entry.*

                 Hi it is me again for my second official post! I thought I would go into more depth of my own history. I was born into this world as a boy in which both of my loving parents decided to name me according to me sex. They raised me as any family would, they encouraged me to play sports, they decorated my room with an assortment of super heroes and always complimented me on my attributes such as the "you're so strong" or "... smart". They raised me as a boy for basically my whole life. I remember them telling me what my future will hold like how one day i'll find myself a wife because I was so handsome and so on. From the earliest I can remember I never felt like the boy my parents were trying to raise. I remember every time they would call me "young man" or "sir" it didn't sit right at all. Mentally as a kid I associated myself more with my mom yet everyone around me said I would grow up to be like my father. This always seemed to strike up so many questions in my mind, like "why do they see me as a boy when I don't feel like one at all?" Before i started puberty I remember asking my mom that exact question and she stated that me feeling like that is only a phase and will change as i get older. She was right on the fact that it would change, she was just wrong in how it would change. Instead of me growing out of those feeling, those feelings started to get more and more intense. By the time I was 13 I started to have panic attacks almost on a daily basis. I wanted to tell my parents about these panic attacks (mainly because i didn't know they were panic attacks at the time and as any 13 year old would be I was scared.) However I did not tell them about the attacks. Simply because both of my parents on several occasions have spoken negatively about same sex couples, so i thought if they talk negatively about those relationships how will they respond to there "son" telling them that she should be their daughter? So i bottled it up. (I should also mention that even though i didn't know what a panic attack was called I did know what triggered them.) What was triggering these panic attacks was my gender dysphoria, throughout the day of people calling me "sir" or "man" and associating me with boys throughout the day caused this internal stress, like i could not understand for the life of me why they couldn't see me as the person i was mentally. During when I was 13 I attempted suicide for the first time, If it weren't for someone intervening that would have probably be the end of my story. I didn't tell the friend that I was transgender only that i was depressed. I told my parents who heard about it the same thing. After around a week the suicide attempt kind of just blew over and i went back to feeling completely alone.

                 Time went by and I struggled with my own gender identity, The people around me including my family used terms like tranny and talked negatively about transgender people, people at my high school would say things like disgusting or that trans people are freaks whenever it was brought up. During my high school life I completely hated myself and what I was. I didn't want to be transgender because of the way society spoke about us and i was tired of the panic attacks that were associated with my gender dysphoria. I couldn't stop my Dysphoria and I couldn't stop the way society talked about us so I felt like i was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Throughout all of middle school and high school I cut myself due to depression and the never ending panic attacks. All the while I was too scared and embarrassed  to ask for help. I attempted suicide for the second time when i was 16. After surviving a second attempt I told my parents about why I was depressed and why I kept cutting/attempting suicide (of course this is the first time they heard about me cutting as well, although when you are shocked that your kid just attempted suicide for the second time the cutting part seems minor.) I told them that i didn't feel male, that on the inside I felt completely female aside from my physical anatomy. After that my parents started having me see a therapist. The therapist was the 3rd person including my parents that I told that i was transgender. He introduced me to online communities and even encouraged me to join local support groups. He helped me understand and come to terms with me being transgender and honestly just talking about it for once helped so much. He even brought my parents into a session to help me convey everything to them about how i felt. However that was the last session i had with that therapists because my parents believed back then that he was enabling abnormal behavior that he should be helping me stop. so then I went straight back to how things were.

                 This state of living continued on until I was around the age of 18. I was tired of feeling alone, tired of feeling depressed, tired of having panic attacks, tired of the dysphoria, just tired of everything really. I wrote a letter for every single person I considered a friend and one for each of my family members as well. I even numbered one line per letter like on my moms the second line of the letter had the number 1 next to it. I did that for each letter so that if they took every line that had a number and put them in numerical order it would create my last poem. After putting all the letters into one of those big yellow envelope things and storing it in my locker at school. (yes i was a senior at 18) I took my dads handgun (which i've never shot a gun at this point in my life.) went out to the woods near my house where i would not be seen. Sat there for awhile and decided to pray to God for the last time, telling him i'm sorry I just don't know how to continue through all of this, that I was tired of feeling this way and tired of the panic attacks. Then I put the gun up to my head and pulled the trigger. Fortunately by the grace of God I did not know to check if the safety was off, I remember squeezing that trigger hard and when it stopped and did not shoot i feel to my knees dropping the gun on the ground just crying. I took it as a sign from God not to kill my self because of me praying before hand then the gun failing to fire. That was the last time I attempted suicide.

                  After that last suicide attempt I decided that i was done torturing my self, I was 18 years old so I contacted a psychiatrists office and got a job to have some sort of stable income, I still had the panic attacks however having someone to talk to helped a lot. I came out to most of my friends and weeded out the people who brought me negativity. With the help of my psychiatrist I contacted an Endocrinologist to start my transition to female with the help of Hormone replacement therapy. (The closest Endo that saw trans patients was in the city 8 hours away from mine, however i will talk about the current state of Trans medical care in a different post.) Starting HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) was a very uplifting experience. Over time as my body adjusted to the new hormones it felt as if my body was meant to run off of them. My current state right now is so much better than my childhood. I am surrounded by friends who support me and my family has come to accept me as well! The amount of panic attacks I have now are far and in between like once a month or even fewer than that. I have a much better mental well being and haven't even thought of suicide in years.

                  I would also like that add that without considering everything I went through with gender dysphoria I had a good childhood. I literally had nothing else in my life that I struggled with. (or at least I didn't acknowledge any other struggle as a struggle.) Now at the age of 25 I love just about everything that is going on in my life.

                  Anyway Thank you all for taking the time to read my entries! I'm sorry for any and all grammatical errors! I am also sorry for any disorganization as this is my first time trying this crazy thing we call blogging!!

                                                                                                                -Sincerely, Annie B

                          P.S. I am also sorry if this seems depressing, I didn't mean for it to be. It is just a part of my Childhood Experience.