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A young woman emerging from the shadows.

Intro

Why do I have this page, when there are so many other stories out there by transgendered women? I suppose in part it is to give myself a place to become known, to express the real me rather than hiding behind a mask of masculinity, in a way I never could when I was younger. Also, by telling my story, maybe I can help some other person stuggling with gender issues, as other's stories have helped me. Storytelling is a profound human need, a way of making sense of the world, and of a person's place in it. So here is my story.

Childhood

I am the oldest child (of 4) in my family, born in 1962 in Washington state. My earliest recollections about wanting to be a girl was when I was about 5 years old. I remember lying in bed and imagining that the covers had some magical power to turn me into a girl; that I was a girl underneath them, from my neck down. I have no idea why I imagined this or wanted it at the time. I do know that I was a quiet and bookish child, not given over to the rambunctiousness of most boys. Not that my parents ever gave me anything other than boy's toys to play with. My best friend at the time was a neighbor girl with whom I used to play with a lot. The next year we moved across town to a new house and school. Not long after, in the second grade I think, I remember wondering out loud to a group of my boy classmates what it would be like to be a girl. They all pushed me into a corner of the gym until I took back what I had said. Naturally, I learned to keep quiet about my "strange" longings! My parents also kept me in a crew cut thoughout grade school; which during the late 60's and early 70's made me stand out even more. I never quite fit in with the other boys, though I did make a few good friends (of both genders) at school and in my neighborhood. I wasn't interested in sports, preferring board games, legos and pretend. I got beaten up a few times by bullies at school untill I learned to avoid them. And it was also about this time that I discovered my mom's lingerie drawer. I was so attracted to the soft feel of her slips and nylons that I started trying them on when I was left alone in the house. I eventually had a stash of things I could wear when I was alone in my room, though like most TV's I went through a couple of purges when I got scared I would get caught. My only sister is 5 years younger then I, and when she started growing up, I remember being envious of the many of the things that she got, though I would at times play Barbie dolls with her! (I got along well with all of my siblings)

Adolescence

I did keep up a fairly "boyish" exterior, albeit of the bookish type; I read alot of science fiction and history, and was really into model-making, mostly warplanes. I was active in the Boy Scouts and in my church (I'm Catholic). I was well enough liked to avoid being labled a "nerd" (wore glasses, but not coke-bottle bottoms, and had up-to-date frames by Jr. High) but was never part of the "in" crowd. I had learned how to get along with different types of people, no matter what their "clique". At least by this time I had convinced my Mom to let me have longer hair than a crewcut! I was good friends with a lot of girls, probably more so than with a lot of my "guy" friends. By the time I was in Jr. High, I had started to try on my Mother's dresses, as well as to be attracted to girls. Or at least I liked girls better than boys. Talk about being confused! I was torn between wanting to be with the pretty girls at school, and wanting to be them! I was too shy to ask girls out for dates, so I never had a girlfriend until college. And I never really had a place or group that I fit in with well. It wasn't until my junior year that I found a niche; I discovered Drama! Acting gave me something that I could do and be known for and a place to accepted; and I didn't have to be a soc or a jock or a greaser. I also became involved in Catholic Youth Organization, where I made alot of close friends. But the urge for the feminine never went away. I dressed when I could, which wasn't often, and fantisized a lot about being a girl. It usually wasn't a sexual turn-on just to be dressed, but it did feel sensual and I would sometimes get aroused. One time, I was house sitting for some neighbors, and was able to spend an afternoon trying on the clothes of their teenage daughter, who was two years older than I. Since this was about '78, I had fairly long hair, just brushing my collar in the back. I tried on one of this girl's dresses, (a red summer one), stuffed one of her bras, and put on one of her headbands. I looked in the mirror, and to my amazement, saw a pretty teenaged girl! Unfortunately, I never had a chance to repeat that experience.

College Years

When I graduated in 1980, I had been accepted at the University of Washington. It was a chance to kinda start over, and see if I could make a place for myself as a male. I grew a goatee over the summer and joined a fraternity. I was active at the Newman center and had a part-time job as a dishwasher then a short-order cook at a bar. I tried a number of majors before settling on Political Science. I also had the last of my major purges of fem clothing. But nothing worked; I still wanted to dress up, I still wished that I had been born a girl. It was also at this time that I discovered the psychological and sociological literature on transvestism and transsexualism; at last I could put a name on my condition! Since I was somewhat attracted to females (and not to males), but also liked dressing as one, I must be a transvestite! It helped me to deal with my feelings at the time. I shaved my beard, and started actually buying my first women's clothes. By this time, I had my own room in the fraternity, and thus a private place to store my clothes and to dress up. One year, I did Cindi Lauper for an air band contest; shaved my legs and appeared in public as a woman for the first time. One of the guys said it was scary how much I looked like a real girl! I also had my first dates with women, my first girlfriend, and my first sexual experience. But I was never quite comfortable asking girls out, as if I didn't quite know how to do it or as if it wasn't quite natural. But I tried because it was expected of me. I really enjoyed the company of women, and it was easy to become friends with them, but there was always something holding me back from any deeper relationship. Part of it, I know, was my cross-dressing, and the fear of what would happen when it was found out, and part of it was just plain old shyness. At any rate, I tried to keep myself active in my frat and church, as well as working to earn a little extra money; too active, because my grades started to suffer! Eventually, I left school without getting a degree; the last two years I was trying to work full time (at a different restaurant) as well as go to school, and even though I was no longer involved in my frat, I could not concentrate on my studies. Political Science had become boring, and I was feeling restless.

Getting By

In 1985, I started working in a restaurant in a Seattle mall. The bar where I had been working had gone out of business. I was working fulltime, shared an apartment with three other guys and was trying to finish up school. As I said before, school eventually fell by the wayside, and I was just kinda surviving. I tried growing a beard again to make me feel more masculine, but got tired of it after about half of a year. Sharing an apartment didn't give me much of a chance for dressing, but I did start to buy clothes mail-order, and got my first wig that way as well. Finally, at about the same time as I left school, I moved into a studio apartment by myself. I could dress when I pleased! Of course, I didn't have much money to get clothes, but I was able to keep my legs and chest shaved for most of the year (only letting it grow during the summer when I needed to wear shorts). I still didn't dress that often, maybe once a week or so at the most, because I spent a lot of time at work and at the Newman Center, and also because (I think) knowing that I could whenever I wanted to helped to keep me fairly content. Besides, having smooth legs expressed my feminine side as well. The oldest pictures on my pics page were taken at this time. I also decided on a femme name at this time, and called myself Kathy. I even went outside enfemme a few times, though I was always worried about what might happen if I got caught. The only thing that I had problems with was that my boss at work wouldn't let my hair get long and was really very predjudiced about it. I got even, though; when he went on vacation, I got my ears pierced! This was a time when guys were just starting to wear one earring- I said I got both ears done to keep ahead of the trends! This of course did not please my boss, and I had to take them out before I got to work. He soon left, and gradually I was able to let my hair grow. I was becoming more secure in expressing my femininity, but was still uncertain of how far I wanted to go. I continued dating, and had some rather short-term relationships, but I was still more comfortable having girls as friends as opposed to girlfriends. But I did want to be able to fall in love and have a family.

Changes

By the early 90's, I knew that I had to do something because I was going nowhere with my life. I moved to a new place, a house where I had several roommates but where I was in the basement by myself, in order to begin to save up money. I went to a counsellor at UW in the Spring of '92 to see if I could get back into school and finish my degree. I could, but since my grades in my Poli Sci classes were so bad, she suggested changing my major to something that I had gotten good grades for in classes I had taken for distribution requirements; namely Anthropology. I was accepted back in, and was to start classes again in the Fall. By this time, I had decided that Kathy didn't fit me and started using Kendra instead, and had begun to look into joining a TG support group in Seattle. I was also seriously considering finding out if a sex-change would be right for me, but decided not to move in that direction quite yet, at least not until I had settled into school again. Then something unexpected happened; just as I was starting classes in the Fall, I met a wonderful woman at the Newman Center. We started dating and soon fell in love. By the next summer, we had started talking about marriage, but I knew I had to tell her about my cross-dressing beforehand. It was one of the hardest things I ever did, because I was so afraid of rejection. I hadn't planned on telling her when I did, it kinda just happened one night after the topic of marriage had come up. I was shaking like a leaf, and her first response was to try and comfort me. She asked me some questions then, and I tried to assure her that my CDing wouldn't interfere with our relationship. The next day, I wanted to talk some more about how we would deal with it, but she had become more nervous about it, and asked if I just couldn't stop it. Like so many others, I said I would try. By the second week, I knew that I couldn't, and told her so. She was not happy about this, but said she could tolerate it as long as she didn't have to participate. We went to pre-marital counselling and talked over some of the issues and came to a balance that we thought we could live with. Basically, we agreed that our relationship and future would come first, and my CDing would have to be secondary to that. I didn't want to jeopardize our relationship by making demands that she couldn't accept, and I didn't want to lose her love. We were married in '94, soon after I finished my BA, and we decided that I would work for a year before going on to grad school (I was still at the same restaurant). I joined a support group in Seattle (called The Emerald City), but only went to two meetings, because my wife didn't like staying home alone while I went out and had fun, and I didn't like getting the cold shoulder when I got home. Still, things were going good with us for the most part, and we had lots of fun together. If I didn't get to be Kendra as often as I liked and couldn't shave my legs, I was busy enough to keep from thinking about it too much. I wanted to go to grad school so that I could get a job at a college or university where my long hair would not be a problem. I recieved my acceptance letter in '95, and we moved to Indiana that fall.

Indiana & grad school

So I statrted graduate school; I was busy getting settled in, taking interesting classes, and didn't have much time for dressing. My wife got a job and we joined a local parish. Money was tight, though, and we weren't really making many new friends. By the second year ('96-'97) I had discovered the Internet, and the many pages dealing with transgenderism. They gave me quite a different perspective than the academic-type books I had found before! Since I was an Associate Instructor as well that year, I had even less time to dress, and it started to weigh on my mind. By the third year, I was having trouble concentrating on my classes, (and spending more time on the Web), though my grades didn't suffer. But whenever I tried to talk with my wife about my cross-dressing, it only upset her. Summers I spent working so that we could have a little extra money. 1998-99 was the toughest one yet; I had my qualifying exams to take, my dissertation proposal to write, and to top it off, my wife's mother died! Then I discovered Debbie's Den chatroom that December, and made my first tentative steps back out into the world (even if it was a cyberworld) as Kendra. In February, I tried again to have a long talk with my wife, telling her about the chatroom and about letting me express more of my feminine self, such as shaving my legs and getting some new clothes (I hadn't bought anything since we were in Seattle). She said she wasn't ready for that and that we couldn't afford to get me any clothes. I was very disappointed, but tried to accept what she said. She also asked me some questions that I couldn't really answer right then. Namely, "Would you leave me if you couldn't shave your legs?", "Aren't your goals in life the same as mine?", and "Don't you like being a man?". After that talk with my wife, I sort of went "underground" about my gender dysphoria, at least as far as my wife was concerned. The year before, I had taken a class on HTML to put up a webpage for my academic self, so I decided to do the same for my feminine self- the result being the early edition of the webpage you see before you. I scanned some of my old pictures for it, in part so that I could have a pic to show when chatting in the Pink Room. I met a lot of wonderful people there, and really enjoyed just being myself, if only online. I also experienced getting hit on by guys in the Open Room, which was flattering and annoying at the same time. In April of '99, I had the oral part of my Quals, and got a "provisional" pass- they wanted a much more detailed dissertation proposal- and I started to question whether I wanted to stay in school. This caused me to become more depressed, even above what I had been feeling from my gender dysphoria. And my wife wanted us to settle down so that we can raise a family, and it would have taken a number af years before I could even finish my degree, let alone find a tenure-track position! In May, I finally got the chance to take some new pictures, and I was quite pleased with the way they came out. I also started dressing more at home when my wife was at work and I was working on my dissertation proposal. Usually just a skirt or jeans and a blouse, and not bother with make-up. And of course I would often spend some time in the afternoon chatting at Debbie's. Summer was first part-time work, then full-time at the same office during July. I had time to surf the web, and to think about where my life was headed. I had found a number of transgender websites where I had found things that I could really relate to, but they were sites geared toward or by transsexuals! To be specific, late-onset transsexuals, whose experiences and feelings were very similar to mine, and different from "classic" transsexuals. And most of the people I liked and related to the best in the chatrooms were also transsexuals. Needless to say, this had caused me to wonder what my next step should be. I was't sure at that point if I needed to transition or if I could be content with a lesser amount of feminization. My wife had been pressuring me to make some decisions about our future, mainly concerning school. I did know that I wasn't happy with the way things were: to answer a couple of my wife's questions above; I didn't really like being a man, and my dream in life was never to be just an office worker and husband, like she seemed to want me to be. But it wasn't until the next year, 2000, that I started to get a grip on who I really was.

Year of Decision- 2000

In January, I wrote a letter to my wife telling her about how I really needed to come to grips with my gender dysphoria, and setting out some of the steps I wanted to take, including getting counselling at the Kinsey Clinic here on campus. Needless to say, she was quite upset, because she had no real idea of how deep my feelings and needs had gotten. We ended up both going to counselling while I worked out just how far I needed to take my gender explorations. (If you'd like to know more details about how things went during that crucial time, check out my Diary.) The upshot of it was, that by May (after I recieved my Master's) I had figured out that I was indeed a transsexual, and had to transition to becoming a woman in order for me to be happy with my life. After much soul searching on both our parts, my wife and I decided that we needed to separate and eventually get a divorce. We moved into different places in August when I started a new Master's program in Information Science. I started the steps which would take me towards transition and our divorce was finalized in December. (See Milestones.
More to come!

The Transition

Once my wife and I separated, I could begin the first true steps in my transition from male to female. One of the first things I did was to begin electrolysis. Luckily, there was someone who practised at a local beauty salon who worked on male beards as well as the more usual women's areas (this is, after all, a rather small college town). I continued to go to counseling, became freinds with a couple of other TS's in the area, and started going to a TG support group sponsered by the campus GLBT office. And of course, started going out in public as Kendra. Since it had been so long since I had really spent much time as Kendra, I had gotten rusty on all the skills I needed to pass, but I picked back up on them quickly enough. At least there were only a couple of times where I knew I had been read! You can look at my pictures from this time to see how I was doing. I also started going to a voice therapist on campus who has experience with TS's. By March of 2001, my doctor was ready to begin presribing HRT, so I started at 2.5 mgs of Premarin. (See also Milestones '01 for more details!) And by a slow process, I introduced Kendra to my ex-wife. It was funny how it worked out, but I think she had to come to her own terms at her own pace with what had happened between us and what was going on with me. We had decided not to contact each other for awhile at the beginning of '01, and had not spoken to each other for a couple of months, when I decided to call her and wish her a Happy Easter. We ended up talking for quite awhile, and she asked if I wanted to go see a national touring production of "Godspell" with her, as the person she was originally going with begged off. So we got together to see "Godspell" (an excellent production) and started the slow process of re-establishing our friendship. It was she who made the suggestion that she get introduced to "Kendra" and the method for doing so. She had gotten involved in selling Mary Kay products, so we started with her giving me a makeover one night, and then progressing from there. Since she was in control of the process, it seemed much easier for her. She was also the one to suggest that I cut my hair in bangs to help hide my high forehead. She gave me a lot of pointers on how to use makeup, dress, and do my hair, so that I became much more passable (though the hormones helped as well).

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