Ev's Story, Such As It Is.

[Guest Ev.]

Hello! Thought I'd make a bio to be a more indepth than my introductory post. So... where to begin?

I suppose first off I'll say that I don't recall most of my childhood, that being from the time I was born to around ten or so, horrible right? What I do remember is mostly just a sense of how things where, from my perspective anyway, rather than actual events though theres a few of those I recall of course. I am 21 and have one older brother, who is 24. My parents are very optimistic people, though my dad didn't use to be that I noticed (he's improved alot since retirement ) and I don't really have anything bad to say about them. I used to partially blame them for how horrid my life turned out, as they aren't the best at parenting, they aren't horrible or anything - far from it, they just aren't very good at it. :S

Anyway, my brother and I used to fight daily. Often times it was a few times a day and I can honestly say I hated him so, so much back then. Until recently I placed the majority of the blame for my depression and resulting problems on him. I was never able to, nor wished to, forgive him for anything that happened until very recently - some weeks prior to my 'Aha!' moment last month. With my growing awareness of truly wishing I was female (born male, I forgot to mention >.<) I gradually realized that more than anything was the cause of my depression so I started disliking my brother much less and actually enjoying his company. He's actually a very nice guy really.

The depression anyway noticeably started when I was in 5th class in Primary School (age 9-11 I think), I haven't a clue what that would translate into for you Americans - your school system confuses the hell out of me . Up to that point I was really, really good at getting up in the mornings and going to school, doing my homework and such. I was always really uncomfortable in social situations though, which my Mum never knew (we talked alot recently ). In the classroom doing work I'd be fine. When it came to being outside during lunch breaks I was horribly anxious, paranoid and very, very self-conscious. Anyway, my attendance got worse and worse and I pretty much outright refused to wear the school uniform after a time, instead always wearing my own pants and the schools sports top jumper thing (which was supposed to only be worn once a week :. I never got bothered for that I have to say, by teachers at least, which was nice.

In 6th my attendance got so, so much worse. I'd be in school for one day, then out for a week, back for a day or two, out for three of four more, etc. Finished Primary School and went of to Secondary. I was absolutely fine there for three months or so, in everyday day. Then the novelty wore of and bullying by one guy for no reason I've ever learned had my bad attendance come back. This resulted in my year head (who was also the school's vice-princible(sp?)) getting involved and almost forcing me to see the school counsellor. Or so it seemed at the time to me. It didn't leave a good impression of 'shrinks' to me, to put it mildly.

After a year of horrible attendance I just left the school altogether much to my parents concern and frustration. This eventually led to seeing a few (yes, a few) different therapists over a period of a year or so, I guess. Each therapist was only there for 6months I believe, so we got the first one with like 2months left. She got nowhere. The second therapist started all the questions over from scratch, and got nowhere. On the third she started over all the questions again to hear them in my own words or some nonsense. It actually got so useless my Mum decided to simply not bother with them, and Mum doesn't get annoyed easily hehe. Anyway, this just worsened my view of therapists and everything similar and so we never went back to any others.

I had a private tutor for 6months so I could get the junior cert, which I did. Someone more savvy in the EU/IRL/US school differences could explain that I'm sure. I went back to school a few times but would very quickly drop out and never return, the worse case was joining a school, going there for the first day of the new school year then never going back... I was just very apathetic to it all. I just didn't care about education or friends and the like. Hurray for depression, right? On the subject of friends actually, I'm the sort who would only have a few very close friends rather than tons of acquaintances. I however never felt close to any of the friends I did have. My favorite memory of school is actually of playing basketball (only sport I had interest in) with a girl in the same class, we never talked or anything that I remember, but its still my favorite memory. The two of us went against six girls plus the teacher one day and won by over 10points. We was epic, I tells ya! ^^

Uhmm... yeah anyway, I kept leaving any schools I joined. Eventually my Mum asked me one day I was in a really, really good mood to pick a course from a pamphlet she had. I picked a basic 'computer maintinence' that was just one hour a week. I did it for three or four weeks then stopped going. The thing that bugged me about it is I actually enjoyed it, granted I felt uncomfortably in all the 'partner with the person beside you to do assembly stuff' parts, but overall I liked the course and I still dropped out! So that decided for me that I'd go to therapy, this time by my choice, and asked Mum to help find one because I'm ignorant and wouldn't a clue where to start looking. :b

That was a little over two years ago, or maybe is three now actually... math isn't making sense in my head atm. Anyway, two or three years ago! Initially I just went about my utter lack of motivation for life in general, I gradually kinda opened up though and talked about some family stuff and how school was and, finally, Ev. Now Ev has pretty much been apart of me since I can remember (around 10 or so), I didn't know if it was with me earlier than that. I never had any female friends, or neighbours, cousins and the like so I didn't get any real chance to explore that side of myself, assuming it was there back then. Alot of my toys where also hand-me-downs from my brother when he outgrew playing with them. I distinctly remember never liking cars the way boys are 'supposed' to. So I never had any barbies or anything. My toy of choice was action man which was basically the boys barbie I think. Each one had a different outfit and different accessories, just guns instead of handbags and jewelery. My favorite thing though was making a few really good looking ones by mixing their clothes, while the rest would look horrible xD I also focused so much more on story and dialogue between my toys rather than just randomly bashing them together as if they were fighting.

Ev anyway surfaced primarily online. Whenever I was playing a game, being the gamer than I am, that gave a choice between the characters gender, I'd choose female. All my screen names would be female, or up in the air due to being an Elf name - though I always knew they were female. I started playing WoW (an MMO for those who don't know) when I was 15 or so and while I did have a few male characters, most were female. I came to realize a year or two later than actually role playing male characters would literally depress me. As I write this now it actually occurs to me it didn't depress me, not as such. Basically me being in reality - depressing cause I was a guy, even though I didn't know/think that was the cause back then. Online my gender didn't matter and I could be whatever I wanted. I almost always chose female and was much, much happier while playing/RPing them. So at the time I viewed it as escapism, though it was really anything but that. ^^

Anyway, it got to the point where I'd be at the PC all happy and social, friendly, playful and whatnot. Then I'd get up to get something from the kitchen or go to the bathroom and my mood would literally just take a dive back to being withdrawn and apathetic to everything. Back at the PC, I'd cheer up again! Back to Ev and therapy though, it took me months and months to actually talk about it. I would daydream about how to phrase it and everything, but whenever there during my session I'd just chicken out and discuss something meaningless to me. I eventually talked about a daydream I had in which due to some unexplained accident I had to have a new synthetic body (think sci-fi :. What I left out was my new body was female. Eventually, months later, I asked if she remembered it and after getting a yes to that I awkwardly mentioned that the body was female. Whoa, what a load of my chest! It was such a massive, massive relief to finally have said it. <3

After that we briefly talked about it now and then but I wasn't really ready to go into it much. Last month I was telling her about the two times I've experienced crossdressing, limited as it was. First of which was when I was 4-6 I think, literally my earliest memory and one I had forgotten until some months ago. The other was when I was around 15 or 16 when my female cousin was staying with us for a year or two during the weeks while she went to collage (took her ages to find an apartment :. I had thought/hoped talking about that would be as much of a relief/confession as Ev was initially but nope, nothing. This actually disappointed me enough to mention it to my therapist right there. Her response was, more or less, along the lines of "things don't always hit us right away, but suddenly after a while they do". I can't remember her exact wording but thats the gist of the lesson.

I get home, write about the session in my therapy journal thing and go to bed (I've very weird sleeping patterns). I wake up later that day at like 9pm, the parents are still away on holiday until the next day and my brother went out drinking and over to a friends. So I ended up looking at alot of youtube videos of TG/TS people and listening to their stories and the like. Oh, forgot to mention during that therapy session I found myself in an oddly relaxed, mellow mood which I didn't really have a name for. This mood got better/bigger as I looked at stuff as my fears and concerns about "sex changes" was drastically lessened. My only knowledge of TS prior to that are those, uhm, night workers shall we say and the ones who apply make up in such a fashion as to make it seem they are also said workers.

A friend I have online was looking into sex changes and the like for herself back when I was 17 or so I think. She used to link me to medical websites, wiki and such but I utterly refused to look at any of them. I remember saying to her that I wouldn't look at them because I was paranoid/afraid that once I did I'd never get them out of my mind and thus mess up my life even further. Since looking at those youtube videos and seeing real people talk about it as opposed to just words on screen from very clinical websites, I was suddenly - and I do mean suddenly - perfectly okay with it all. After Youtube, which I was at for eight or nine hours, I just say back and realized I was fine with it all now. That if I am TG or TS or whatever, then thats okay. If I end up wanting to transition, to whatever degree, thats okay. If simply having realized this about myself and thus being able to be happy without changing anything, thats okay.

Since then I started looking up info and found this wonderful website, hehe! So right now I'm at the point where I really want to delve into all these feelings and thoughts with my therapist (next session is on Friday, gawd its so far away xD) but am very mindful about not wanting to rush into anything. If she turned around and said, "do you want to try hormones now?" chances are I would say yes. However, I'm not looking to rush into things and ask her for a letter or anything of that nature. Just explore this wonderfully eye-opening past few weeks. Oh and that good/mellow mood as a result of therapy I mentioned took me two days to realize it was actually happiness - thats how little I've felt it.

So yes, thats me! I actually created a new email address the other day because my "old" one was basically a very vampiric-ish male one that was my first forum RP char (the forum changed site so I needed an email address to register on the new one ^^). Oh! On my name Ev is for Evelyn which I didn't really choose as such. I would be imagining myself via daydreams as a women daily really, but every two or three months I'd change the name to something I liked more at that point in time. When I finally got around to talking about me in therapy, Ev was the current one then so it stuck and I'm really happy with it.

Whew, so that took ages to write, er, type. I feel like hugging someone now, but everyone else is asleep at this hour (just going 3am here)... oh, which actually reminds me, I used to be SUPER, SUPER hug friendly. I always wanted to hug Mum literally everytime I saw her or went past on the way to and from the kitchen. That was years ago though, so I stopped doing it ages ago. Recently I hug her more though which I think is nice. ^^;

~Ev. *Smooches*

[Guest miss kindheart]

Hi Ev,

<<< hug >>>

Thank you for sharing your story

vanna

[Carolyn Marie]

Thank you so much for posting this bio, Ev. I know you put a lot of work and thought into it, and I appreciate that.

Your story is that much different than most. The route we take to get to the place where everything starts becoming clear is different

for everyone, but the final destination always seems to be the same. Once that light bulb turns on, it just an amazing feeling of, "hey,

this is me, this is who I am, why didn't I ever realize it before?"

I look forward to hearing more about how things develop for you.

Carolyn Marie

[Guest Pól]

Welcome to the forums, Ev!

Your mum sounds like a true ally for you -- you're lucky to have her. I remember 6th class from primary being hell also. I made it through the LC, but I was basically miserable.

I look forward to seeing your posts

Pól

[Guest KimberlyF]

Hi Ev,

Welcome to LP.

Good luck on wherever you end up.

Kim

[Guest Ev.]

I know you put a lot of work and thought into it, and I appreciate that.

I find this really amusing actually! ^^ I put so little thought into it. After I had finished I saved the entire thing as a draft in my emails, in cause it never got posted here for whatever reason. I remember thinking afterwards though that I left out so much stuff. How my relationship with different family members are, all those little 'clues' that I was dismissing but now add up into this wonderful puzzle that fits together and gives so much sense to my life and the events therein. Ah well. I appreciate you appreciating it.

Once that light bulb turns on, it just an amazing feeling of, "hey,this is me, this is who I am, why didn't I ever realize it before?"

Omg, very much so! My last therapy session I was kinda talking about this and I felt my therapist was rather dismissive of it and mentioned that I should bear in mind I might not feel the same way in, say, a few weeks and that I, potentially, was just wanting to 'fit in' with the TG community which I found just silly. I know how I feel, most of the time anyway. After reading lots of topics here actually, I decided I'm going to ask her if she has any experience in dealing with gender identity issues and if she's qualified to "diagnose" me. So I might look into seeing a gender therapist at some point, I really like my current therapist though.

Your mum sounds like a true ally for you -- you're lucky to have her.

Hi Pól! Yeah, my mum is great. As far as I'm aware she is fine with the LGBT community, just doesn't feel the should have same-sex marriages (mum being religious), but she has nothing bad to say about them. I talk to her alot more since that awesome therapy session I had, and was actually open about how awkward I find social situations for once. I also sneaked in some questions about how supportive financially she thinks she'd be for things myself and the brother would like to do (used laser eye surgery as the guise - though I want that too xD). Basically "the way I see it, its your (and brothers) money anyway and if you want to take some of it now for something, thats fine". So that was awesome to hear, even if she didn't know my true reason for wanting to know. We where also talking about something else that same time and basically led to her, in reference to other people, saying people should do what makes them happy - which was also awesome to hear! ^^

I've no clue how my dad would react to all this though. He generally keeps his opinions to himself so... I dunno. My brother on the other hand is pretty liberal and I've had the growing feeling that he'd be fine with it and very supportive. Might not understand it/me, but supportive nonetheless. I mentioned how I used to blame him for stuff up above? Well I actually talked to him today and essentially said he's forgiven and that not only does it no longer matter to me, but I don't think he's the reason for my depression and social ineptness so... he was quite happy and relieved I think, at that.

All in all I have to say, these past few weeks have been the best of my life so far, and I haven't even really started talking about things with my therapist or seriously considering transition (just that I'm fine and accepting of it, should I want to transition at some point), and already my relationships with my family is improving drastically!

Anyway, thank you both for the support!

~Ev.

[Guest Pól]

I remember thinking afterwards though that I left out so much stuff. How my relationship with different family members are, all those little 'clues' that I was dismissing but now add up into this wonderful puzzle that fits together and gives so much sense to my life and the events therein. Ah well. I appreciate you appreciating it.

~Ev.

You can always add more to it if you like -- that's what the Bio section is for

You could ask your mum eventually about what she thinks about coming out to your father and brother -- she'd probably have a decent idea of how that might go.

Cheers,

Pól

[Guest Ev.]

Mmh, I planned on telling much first up until recently. Currently I'm not sure whether to open up to my brother or mum first though, as while I think both would be supportive, my brother is much less likely to spread the news to my aunts and whatnot so... we'll see I guess. I take it bio's can be used continually then? Just add onto it with new posts in an almost, diary-to-other-people sort of way? Just that I see a lot of people posting in the MTF/FTM/Teen forums when something happens in day to day life, rather than updating a bio.

I want to talk to my parents today anyway, once they get back home in a few hours. Same way I told my brother I don't blame him for anything anymore and that everything is fine between us, I want to tell my parents much the same. Might suggest we all go out to dinner some night too, which is not something I do - been out once, not including a funeral last month, in recent years and that was for my Mum's 60th hehe. I kinda hope they see how much happier I am in the past few weeks though, so I can use that as pursuasive ammo if needed while/after I come out to them. Victory lies in preperation!

Kimberly, thank you for the welcome! Didn't respond before as your post wasn't showing yet when I replied yesterday. *Hugs*

~Ev.

[Guest Redbeard]

Amazing story, thanks for sharing.

[Guest Ev.]

You are welcome, I suppose, Redbeard. ^^

So I ended up "forgiving" my parents which was awkward. Was all silent for a while, I panicked and was thinking how to better explain things but it all turned out good, they just took their time in responding. Well, mum anyway. Dad only gave a nod of thanks, which for him is probably quite a lot.

Talked to mum for a good while yesterday about my so-called issue without ever naming it. Asked her how important it is she knows whats going on, from her perspective ofc. Basically the answer was she would like to know, but am simply happy I'm being more open even if I don't want to tell her what the 'issue' is as of yet, just that she's happy knowing however much I want to share - awesome! And I did ask about us going out to dinner some evening, which was well received but nothing has happened yet due to brothers work schedule. All in all though my relationship with my family is improving day by day which is really weird as its completely new to me, still very nice though of course.

I briefly mentioned this in my 'transition plan' topic but I think it bears repeating. Decided not to get a GT just yet. Would it be helpful? Undoubtedly. Would it mean hormones earlier? Quite possibly. I haven't decided if thats what I'll want yet though. I can find out about this and myself prior to going to see a GT, whom from what I read are very expensive so. If I went now it would simply be the same as my current therapist, only he/she'd know about gender identity stuff. I would still have to spent weeks if not months figuring out what I want before seeking a letter and the like for hormones. Current therapist has challenged my views/plan already, I appreciate that though. Makes me look more fully at it and to "defend" the things I really want to do which helps me grow as a person I think. ^^

Hrm, what else... oh, I mentioned some of this to a friend I have on the PS3, well two actually, one was just an hour or so ago though. Happy I'm improving and even suggested meeting up sometime when I'm comfortable doing that (on a friend basis, for those reading too deeply into that lol). So everyone I've told (all online, granted) all seem very happy and supportive about it.

Spent hours looking at clothes online too, trying to find things I'd like to order. Found quite a few but its kinda iffy at the same time. Can't really do female tees or certain styles of pants. Shoes I frankly dunno where to even begin . So mostly just looking at kinda sporty trousers and some hoodies. Nothing really feminine, but obviously womens. <3 online shopping.

~Ev.