So hey. Hi. It's 1:42 in the morning, probably not the best time to start a blog but better late than never, right?
My name on my birth certificate is Ashley. I've really always kinda hated that name. All the stereotypes for that name were preppy cheerleaders or student council president, at least at my high school. I wasn't like that, I was a jock. I'd always been athletic, my dad was hugely athletic and it was just there my whole life. I played baseball, basketball, soccer, track, anything.
I was a quiet kid, really shy and very emotional. I faced bullying throughout elementary school. When I was in Kindergarten I was bullied because I would cry easily. In first through third grade, I was the only girl in a neighborhood of boys and I tried desperately to fit in. I was naive and trusting and just wanted to be 'one of the boys' which lead to bullying there. My family moved to Puyallup, Washington on Halloween and I started school late in my fourth grade year. School became hell for me.
At my new elementary school there was no such thing as tomboy. I had short hair, baggy clothes, and wanted to play sports with the boys during recess. I was bullied and the more I stood out as a 'tom boy' the worse it got. In the fifth grade I humiliated some boy by out performing him in a pick up game of basketball and on the bus ride home he threatened to 'dip my cat in kerosene and throw it's burning carcass into my house'. My parents flipped but everyone else looked at it as 'kids will be kids'.
The next year a guy who was big (like he went on to be a linebacker in high school and if maybe even college) threw handfuls of rocks on my back over and over after slide tackling him in soccer. My back grew into one giant welt and my principal at my school tried to convince me I had an allergic reaction to something. I got in trouble for replying "yeah the rocks thrown at my back".
For my parents this was enough, my mom went haywire and made a huge fuss with the PTA, I got into martial arts and counseling for confidence. My parents are good people, weird but good. My mom is an open democrat and pagan. My father only once aligned himself to any religion and that was baptist and that's cause the military wanted something to put on his dog tags when he was drafted and at his base, the baptist boys had a good basketball team. The reason I brought that up was cause my atheist and pagan parents were considering sending me to an all-girl's catholic school so I couldn't be bullied anymore. I asked for one semester to try it out at junior high, hoping that the influx of three other elementary schools would give me a better chance to fit in.
I also subconsciously started to assimilate more, I was still a tom boy- I was one of two girls who played football in seventh grade because a rule stipulates that no seventh grade student could be cut from the team for any reason. It never made the gender distinction. Somehow having another girl on the team made it okay and the same kids who bullied me for three years were okay with me, at least for two hours during practice. But other than that, I was no longer cutting my hair short, while I wore tomboyish clothes still, I let my mom pick out girlie clothes for me and I slowly allowed myself to wear these clothes. I also didn't try to make friends. The harder I tried, the worse I failed since I didn't seem to ever speak girl properly.
I got on some really good teams for sports and was a great athlete, until 8th grade when my ankle decided to defy physics during an extramural soccer practice. My ankle went up and over the ball and the top of my foot hit the ground while my leg was still straight. It wasn't pretty but it effectively killed my athletic career. It would take a few years before it took full effect but by the time I graduated I had two bad ankles, two bad knees, and couldn't do more than half-ass it in PE.
In high school I faced my first real bullying by girls, again I attribute this to the fact I didn't speak girl. I shopped at all the popular stores, but the clothes I picked were either boy colors or even from the boy's section. I could never fully get comfortable in girl clothes and only wore dresses to my older sister's wedding (which as soon as I finished being a bride's maid I threw on my high tops) and the only two dances I attended 9th grade and Senior prom. I probably had a couple other things like family things where I had to dress up, but I always remember having jeans or sweats to change into the first second I could get out of the dresses. I also had horrible taste in music (I'll admit that freely). My parents listened to country and oldies and while I knew every Beach Boys song by heart, I missed the days when Green Day was cool so I had no idea what was what with music. I just, I didn't have anything to say to any girl and I fell back on old habits of trying too hard.
By my senior year I had a very small group of friends, people I didn't even like that much but that tolerated my presence. I just stopped caring, I didn't try to make friends, I shut down and just was there. I ignored the whispers and the name calling, ignored the rumors of me staring at girls in the locker room. I made some friends then that I'm still friends with now. People that stood up for me when others called me dyke, who when I finally realized I was attracted to girls the year after graduation were still there for me, and who when I first mentioned that I thought I might want to transition asked if I had any names picked out. 95% of the people I went to high school with, I have completely lost touch with (assuming I had touch in the first place). I hear stories about so and so getting married, divorced, having a baby, coming out, getting arrested, whatever, and I don't really care.
I went to school in Seattle, I wanted to be an actress but I had the weirdest logic for it in my head. I wanted to learn how to be a director and learn to speak the language of the people behind the camera so I could be better in front of it. So I went to film school... at a community college. That lasted for a semester since everyone in my program got drunk and high all the time and because no matter what I did the head of the program gave me a C. I could write my name on paper or give him the best paper I ever wrote. It was his opinion that women belonged in the porn industry and that was the only place they had value.
I moved home, which felt like a death sentence. I hate Puyallup. It's filled with so many religious people, not just that... but bigoted religious people. Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists, idiots. The only gay kids in school were the flaming homo boys... well until after when all the repressed religious kids would come out. I got a lot of apologies when I moved back, and I was still technically oblivious of my sexual identity.
A year after high school I was in a writing group online, and that's where I met Shannon. I was 19 and she was 18 and just starting university at UBC in Vancouver. We hit it off and when I went up to check out UBC film school (which I would recommend to anyone in Canada who wanted to do film. It's a great program- not that I ever took it but I know people who have) we met and it was instant sparks. We were friends for a while and eventually we developed into a relationship. Both of our first real romance and we fell deeply in love.
We made some bad choices, mostly about stupid stuff. Like to save her money on bus fare to come visit I drove to Bellingham instead of Seattle to pick her up and I lied to my mom about it. It killed over a half tank of gas and I was later coming home then I said I was going to. Just stupid stuff, I was too worried about coming out to her that everything coming out of my mouth was pretty much a lie. It eventually blew up in my face and I got grounded for lying. It took her some time but she finally came around to me being a lesbian which was funny because she had a lot of lesbian friends in her circle. I thought my dad would be the hard sell, he is from the Mid-West and he's let slip some comments in the past about different people that were ignorant... but he was the one who was cool with it first. I get why my mom was worried about it, she comes from an EXTREMELY religious family who aren't the most educated. She knew that I would face troubles. She knew how sensitive I was and how hard the road would be.
I eventually moved to Canada to be with Shannon, using whatever kind of permit I could get to just be with her. In Canada it was easier to just be us. We never really hold hands or anything when we were in Puyallup but we were open and comfortable in her native land. We dated for years and a week before our fifth anniversary we decided to get married on our anniversary. Our parents and siblings came, along with all of our friends that could make it in short notice, and we got married on the beach in Vancouver at sunset.
During our relationship, we talked about transgender issues several times. I have huge breasts, I always have. My sister (12 years my senior) has never been larger than a C cup, even when pregnant, and I was a C in high school, and when I put on weight after school they eventually blossomed to the DDD or E size (depending on the bra) mammoths they are now. They continue to be the blight of my existence, but back then, they kept me from ever being able to follow through with anything. Shan and I tried twice to get me boy clothes.
The first time we shopped at a store that didn't quite have my size and I was self conscious so I just grabbed the first thing that kinda fit. We also went to Seattle and went to Babeland (a really amazing woman centric sex store). They had packing penises and Shan (who is a huge feminist and a student midwife) was asking questions I was way to embarrassed to ask. We got a harness (the cheapest they had) and went for a soft pack, but being the total boy I wanted I wanted the biggest one. It ended up being a bit of my undoing since it looked ridiculously large in my pants, would always flop over since it didn't fit in the harness, and at that time my hair was past my shoulder blades (though almost always tied up). I didn't bind, not having the slightest clue how to do it and too nervous to really google anything. It ended up being a bit of a failed experiment.
It came up a few more times during our relationship and I grew a little less nervous each time it came up. We went back to Babeland and bought a medium sized pack this time, a better harness, and then we spent time getting me good boy clothes that fit well and hid my body shape. At the time she was working at a baby store in Vancouver and she had a couple products in store for pregnant women or women who'd just given birth and we improvised a very (VERY) half assed binder. I was more comfortable in the clothes, with the penis, but the binder was torture. I'm a big person, with lots of curves, and the binder would ride up like nobody's business. I could wear it for a bit but then it'd roll into my ribs and become too painful to deal with. I couldn't bind since we'd spent our money on clothes we couldn't afford a decent binder so I just went without.
I also did something else extremely liberating, I cut of 13 inches of hair. After elementary school I only trimmed my hair, but never CUT it short. Maybe bangs or layering or something, but it stayed longer. But I finally just thought 'to hell with it' and cut it short. It was incredible... well aside from the fact that the place where I got it cut had different ideas about what my hair should look like than I did. The first cut was great, the second I looked like a butch gym teacher with a boxy hair cut, the repair cut on that was great, but then the next one I had a very pixie-femme thing going on. I had one hair dresser at the place, the one who did the first cut and all the repairs, she was amazing- everyone else thought masculine or boy cut meant I want to look as dykey as possible. I usually got it fixed and it progressively grew shorter and shorter. We also went to the Trans-Health BC office in Vancouver to start scouting my options for the transition but that got put on hold.
Shannon, who like I said, has a passion for women and babies. She had worked in a baby store and was a doula (birth coach/partner) and post-partum doula (helping new parents transition to having babies) but her passion was midwifery. As a midwife she could be a better advocate for the pregnant woman and that is what she wanted but UBC, her former school and only midwifery option in Western Canada, had and still has an exceptionally small and competitive program. I know that if she'd ever gotten an interview, her passion would've gotten her in but alas over a hundred women would compete each year for 10 spots. We looked at Seattle Midwifery School, which would bring us down to the states where our marriage wouldn't be legally recognized but we could live in Seattle which was gay-friendly enough for us. But unfortunately SMS merged with Bastyr College (a holistic medicine school) and the Midwifery program which had once been easy to get into became a master's program and Shan would have to be in school for a few more years to just get the pre-requesits to attend. So an option which we had begun before but abandoned became our new option. New Zealand.
Canada and New Zealand have similar midwifery practices, like the roles of midwives except that in Canada it's more the 'hippy' or 'new age' parents that have midwives while most births in New Zealand are done by midwives. The biggest perk was that in a country of 4.3 million, there were 5 midwifery schools while Canada with it's 33.1 million had less than 3 schools. Of all the countries in the world, New Zealand is one of the easiest to transfer back to Canada as a midwife. So we decided to move here in January for her to go to school. I decided to fill my time by pursuing a patisserie degree (pastry chef) since I've long since given up on film (but that's another blog entry for another time).
After being here for nearly seven months now, I finally started addressing the issue that my newly developed social anxiety was coming from the fact that when I look in the mirror I don't feel connected to the person I am below the shoulders. So I decided that I was really going to do it, I was really going to follow the path that had always been there for me I just hadn't know exactly how to start down the path.
In Canada you have to live as a male for a year to prove your seriousness, which I had been doing- except at work because I worked as a production assistant in film and was on a new project almost every time I worked and it would've been more burden than it was worth. In Auckland, I walked a fine line. I didn't bring any effeminate clothing but I was in a program where I was the oldest by a good 5 years (with the exception of a woman who had 10 years on me). There was a very immature vibe in the program and I was too nervous to really address it. So I kept it up at home, even if I wasn't packing all the time, I used Jake- Jacob, which was the name my wife and I finally settled on after a LONG stretch of time where we tried to decide.
But I finally built the courage to talk to the university doctor about why I don't think the anxiety medication I was on wasn't working with my social anxiety. I had short hair, boy clothes on, but never came close to passing as a male (which somehow I had done in Vancouver sometimes). We talked gender and body dysphoria and about how tomboy was never the right word for me, about how I never really feel GAY (like I still inwardly flinch when I call myself a lesbian but I proudly proclaim I've got a wife- and if you had my wife you would too). And he referred me to an endocrinologist to begin my journey.
I'm at a small empass there since Shan and I are on a fairly limited budget in New Zealand based off of student loans and VERY generous parents, but the appointment may or may not be covered by the student health insurance I'm on (most likely not) so I'll have to fork out between 100-300 bucks for the appointment which isn't something we can do in the near future. So instead we decided to go to underworks.com and get me a real binder. I've been snooping different Transmen blogs and underworks kept coming up over and over, and plus sized ones raved about particular models so we went with one, the 997, since I've got a long torso and need the extra length it offers so it doesn't hit my hips and roll up uncomfortably.
I haven't told my parents now but I kinda have a feeling this may be easier for them to swallow than me coming out. I was always a little boy trapped in a little girl's body. But since I have some other stuff going on right now I'm not going to broach this with them yet. Instead I'm putting it out on the internet.
It feels very cathartic to just vent like this, to just let my fingers confess stuff that very few people know about me. So this is my goal, to write my journey as I take it. I'll include pictures, possibly audio when I start T and what not. I'm not guaranteeing I'm taking the best way to get to my destination, but it's the journey that counts right?
So for now, this it is... an hour and some later. Ha. I'm sorry if my grammar's hell, it is 3am now.
Oh PS, if you're going to write hateful stuff I'll just delete you but if you have questions, comments, concerns, whatever I'll try to get back to you as best as I can.
Night all,
Jake
