My transition story

Hello all,


so, I was asked by a new and very nice friend recently that if there was any sort of blog detailing my transition that they'd like to see it. and well, no such thing really exists, which his a shame because i think that there absolutely should be. 

So I will be beginning that here, a sort of story of how I got to where I am now from as far back as I can remember. a heads up for anyone reading this that it will have, of course, some pretty personal stuff within it that I just want to give you a heads up about, this is my journey through my sexuality and gender, so naturally its probably going to have some uncomfortable things in it.

remembering back to being a child I don't think I can recall any direct or open rejections of my gender, and I think growing up I was mostly fine with being a boy, of course I had a few small things like liking pink toys and stuffed animals, which mildly upset my father, but I wasn't apparently trans at all before middle school.

when I was in middle school  (6-8th grade) I remember realizing that i was really upset with the way that boys and girls were constantly being separated and that i had to be with other guys a lot. all my closest friends were guys and so I didn't really have anyone aside from my mother to talk about "girl stuff" with. my mother isn't exactly the most feminine role model, having been in the military she kind of had the attitude of "anything a guy/girl can do a guy/girl can do"  which in my mind caused so much stress, because I knew that that was right wile still feeling like there was a whole world of things I couldn't do without being embarrassed or ridiculed for.

I was still sort of comfortable being a 'guy", my interests were in videogames and firearms and when that's the case no one thinks that you also must really be into women clothes and jewelry. my friends who were girls really liked me, because unlike most guys I wasn't, well, openly an asshole to them for any feminine interests they had. Guys don't always see when they do that, but a lot of guys will immediately reject or shame anything feminine to preserve their masculinity.

it was in middle-school when I started to cross-dress. I still remember the first time I did it, I was home alone for one of the first times in my life, and I was being the well behaved kid I normally was but I was just lying down on the couch seething in rage over the fact that I KNEW guys and girls aren't that different, and yet still I couldn't wear a skirt. it was the cognitive dissonance that was getting to me. My mind was racing and I was so incredibly mad at the world about the simple fact that I couldn't wear a skirt when I wanted that I was just holding my fists clenched. it got to me and I just got up, opened my mothers closet, grabbed a skirt, put it on, sat back down on the couch and just felt right. it was like all the internal conflict in my mind has dissipated and I could play some videogames in peace. when I heard my mother drive back home I put the skirt back and changed back into my shorts as fast as I could.

throughout middle-school I did this regularly, every chance I had to wear my mothers clothes I did, and it made me happy to do it. still when out and at school I dressed in camo and wore trucker hats, like was one of the redneck kids. but when I was back at home I was playing games with girl characters and in girls clothes., and no one really knew.

there was a funny moment once when a friend and I were playing Pokemon and he was really grilling me, asking why I chose the girl character and I was so afraid I had just kind of been found out, but he just dropped it like it was nothing.

once I was in highshool nothing really changed. I was dating though, which gave me an opportunity to let girls do makeup on me and chose how I dress, sometimes they wanted me to look cute an I really loved that. I made friends with just about every lesbian girl at my school, and it got to the point that my friends called it the "Olson effect" after my last name.

it was in highschool psychology class that i had first heard of transgender people and it was unfortunately really not the context I needed to hear about them first. I think learning about trans people for the first time in the same context as people with multiple personality disorder and so on made me think that it couldn't apply to me, because I wasn't disordered in some way. it did however plant the idea in my mind that what I was doing at home could have a name.

Some time in highschool I watched Season Three Episode Six of Night Court. wow what a formative moment for me. Night court is an old (older than me) comedy show about a night court and in this episode the 'player' character who has an old friend visiting is DISGUSTED to find out that his friend is now a trans woman. the joke is on him though, this woman who he looked up to as a male role model is actually happy and thriving as a woman, she is married and doing quite well for herself. and the show doesn't make fun of her for it, it actually makes fun of Dan for being so dramatic about the whole situation. and in the end he comes to terms and is actually happy for his friend. watching that filled me with SO MANY QUESTIONS. because I didn't know that trans people actually underwent surgery and, well I didn't know a lot. my mom answered some of those questions for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qLSBArRINs&t=3s

^thats the URL for a youtube clip of the episode of the show^

though my curiosity was peaked, I was willing to stay in denial for quite a while.

in my senior year of highschool my friends and I visited a 5-below store and we joked about wearing wigs. I actually bought one, which, I tried to just play off as a joke, but it confused my friends at the time because the bit was sort of over and it seemed like I was just buying a woman wig. I snuck it back into my house where I would wear it regularly whenever alone, and held onto until we moved, when I hastily threw it away before someone could find out I still had it. I only ever once wore it out in public, which was on halloween.

another big moment for me was when, back in highschool, during pride week (school pride, not gay pride) I wore a purple tutu, which was our school color, of course I played it off as goofy school pride, after all some people were wearing purple morph suits, so I wasn't THAT crazy looking. naturally I kept this in my closet for a long time after and wore it every now and then.

then I was off to college, and in a dorm shared with 4 other guys, one on my side of the room. this all meant that I simply was unable to engage in my usual means of gender expression for some time. it was about 2 and a half years that I was unable to dress how I normally wanted to, but I did experiment by letting my hair grow out. of course as a 'guy' you can't just grow out your hair without drawing attention. which meant I had to tell people every day "oh, I'm busy but I'll get a haircut soon". it was combination of that and the fact that I didn't know how to keep the hair out of my eyes that made me cut it still a couple times back down to its short length, and I was terribly sad when I had to.

A milestone moment took place in my 3rd year in university abroad. I was in Germany, as it would happen, one day before the lock downs would hit Europe. I was in a shopping mall when I saw a rack of really cute skirts. I felt like this might be my one chance to get what I really want. I was "shopping" in the mens section for probably an hour, actually never looking at a single piece of mens clothes all the while totally fixated on the skirts on the rack next to me. I was paranoid that everyone's eyes were on me, so I was hesitant, and every time I walked past the skirts I kept walking... until I finally made a pass and grabbed a long flowey skirt from the rack. I was terrified that someone would call me out, make a scene, say something in German that I couldn't respond to or understand. it felt like entering a fighting ring. I grabbed some other random clothes to bury the skirt under at the checkout and then I checked out and went to the airbnb in pure euphoria.

I went back to that mall the next day,  bright and early so that I could beat the crowds, but unfortunatly for me the pandemic had reached Germany and the lockdown had begun unbeknownst to me. I made it back to Lithuania where I was living and I stayed in another Airbnb for my 2 weeks of quarantine. I wore that skirt the whole time. no pants, no shorts the whole time, just the skirt. it was also then that I sort of became friends with a metalhead named Nika (for short), who became my roomate the following summer. lucky for me he had long, long black hair. What it meant for me is that I could grow my hair back out and actually fit in with someone. the BIG problem however was he was a misogynist and borderline fascist, which meant my identity with him was still not safe.

it was not long after that I found the "r/feminineboys" sub-reddit. which is basically a forum for feminine guys, and wow did I feel like I had finally found a place where I fit in. finally I could express my desire to be feminine with a group of people with no judgement and actual encouragement.

I changed roomates later on to be with a very nice Kurdish man named Ali, who was a good few years older than me. when I was there the desire to be even more feminine was eating away at me, I was dying to paint my nails. I remember preparing my friends with jokes about going goth, as a kind of ironic joke, but in reality as an excuse to paint my nails black. I remember going to the store, and approaching the nail polish... and then walking right past it. mission failed. so I went back and the next day I chickened out again. I was just scared in the same way as I was in germany, I figured that if someone called me out in Lithuanian I'd die of embarrassment and would have no way to plea my case.

I eventually did it. I THREW the nail polish in my basket, and bought it in the self checkout. even when I had it I was too scared to use it, because it was a public admission that I was unsatisfied with being masculine. but I did do it, I painted my pinky finger and then wore gloves to cover it up. this was Lithuania though, and it gave me an excuse to wear gloves at all times. day by day I painted the other nails. eventually I had them all painted black, but no one knew. eventually my roomate got drunk, and I was drinking some beers with him, and I took my gloves off. he saw them and asked about it, I panicked and told him the excuse I had lined up which was "I'm painting them to stop myself from biting my nails" but he looked at me and said, "isn't that kind of a thing women do?" god I think I would have been totally fine with a heart attack right at that moment, but I said "eh, I mean some guys do it too" and he said "nice, I think they look good on you". I think at that moment the happiness was overwhelming

after that I posted online about it. and then tired on eyeliner as well (this comes back up later). the process of getting it was very much the same, with me chickening out the first couple times, but eventually getting it and doing it a little, in a way I hoped no one else would notice.

once again I was staying with a different roomate, his name was Stass (short for Stanislav) and he was actually the RA for our dorm floor. which is hilarious, because he regularly broke more rules than I did. at some point when staying with him there was a clothes exchange table in our dorm that anyone could leave clothes or pick up clothes from. I thought this was the perfect opportunity because there were two really cute skirts there I wanted, and I could just grab them and run up to my room, which was the plan. what ended up happening was that I grabbed them, I stuffed them into my inside jacket pockets, and hopped into the elevator, which Stass ran into at the last second. I was terrified since I now knew I'd have to actually walk back to our dorm room together with the skirts noticeably stuffed in my jacket pockets. He looked at me and said something along the lines of "why are you acting so weird/guilty" which I just brushed off and then we made our way back to the dorm and he never found out about what I was up to.

before I knew it I was back in the USA (temporarily) and I brought my feminine items with me. though I wasn't painting my nails or wearing makeup out of fear that my father would take issue with it. I had, for a while, been on r/feminineboys and r/egg, 'r/egg' is a forum for, as it describes itself 'trans people in denial' and has memes that any closeted trans person would relate to, and I DID relate to them, a lot. I was pretty active in that part of the internet, while still figuring out if I was trans or just a guy with a really strong feminine side. I made the choice to ask some online friends I had to call me "she/her' in conversation, and that made me really happy, and to my own dismay it confirmed my own trans identity, because I was happier being seen as and treated as a woman. I reached out to an Ex of mine who as luck would have it, transitioned the other way and was living as a man, he made me more sure of who I was as well with a lot of lovely and kind encouragement.

i had a friend I felt i needed to come out to first, someone who I thought least likely to judge me. so I had taken a long bikeride with them, which is sometrhing we did from time to time, and when we were making our way along, I stopped him, and as seriously as I could I broke the news to them. AS IT WOULD TURN OUT they had ALREADY SEEN MY POSTS ONLINE and KNEW THE WHOLE TIME. it was a hilarious and anticlimactic coming out.

after this a friend of mine had found my skirts in my room, and I had to come out to them, to their surprise. they were accepting. I was reall keen on telling my parents that I'm trans, and I had been trying to muster the courage for a while, but simply couldn't. eventually I was back in Lithuania and this time with basically knowledge that I'm trans.

during this early time back in lithuania I was facing two real time sensative problems. first was the fact that I was losing sleep over nightmares about beards and mustaches. I had at different times tired to grow out my facial hair, but it disgusts me to have it. and shaving wasn't cutting it, the presence of facial hair was driving me mad. I thought I was losing too much sleep over it. I was shaving in my nightmares and everyone had beards in my dreams and I couldn't handle it, so I somehow convinced my mother to let me begin laser hair removal in lithuania, while still in the closet, and while hiding it from the other people in my university. actually I had become a kind of recluse. rather than showing up I was dressing more subtly feminine and getting to the point that my androgyny was noticeable and people commented on it.

the second really time sensitive problem was I thought that my hair could be falling out. it was a TERRIFYING thought, something that I had always hid under hats that I now loved and thought was one of my best features, disappearing. I was crying after showers, skipping showers, seeing dermatologists and generally just freaking out. showers really showed how much hair was coming out, and I can't tell even now if my hair ever actually was thinning out, but the stress could have been contributing to the hair loss, which is a vicious cycle of stress causing stress. it caused me enough trouble that I was researching how to take anti-testosterone medication on the black market, incase it was male-pattern baldness. which even researching caused me severe stress, just imagining that a male disease was taking away my womanhood, the thought of it all, god, it was debilitating. my loose hairs around the appartment were really visable, and so I rarely moved off of my couch. I still wan't out to my parents nor lithuaninan friends, so I was suffering without any real help. it pushed me over the edge though, I hovered my hand over the purchase button on an illegal russian medication website and just left my computer to go to the store. I needed the walk there to clear my head. when walking I texted my mother "what would you think if I came out to you as gay or trans, hypothetically?".

My mother called me and asked if everything was okay or if I wanted to talk about something... I did want to talk. she said she could understand if I was gay, but trans? am I sure? at that point I was, but she was doubtful. I can't blame her, I was secretive with my crossdressing and well almost everything up to that point. she didn't handle it as well as I had hoped, but also not as poorly as I worried she might. she was going through a really rough time mentally and she was in and out of mental hospitals, and I can't help but blame myself somewhat for that.

still, she was generally supportive, and I had stuck around Lithuania for the rest of the semester I was there, coming out to one other student, but being reminded why I was a recluse when Nika found me in the University and asked me if I had lost a bet or something when he saw me as I was; wearing a womans coat and hairclips. so eventually I found myself back home, with parents who knew, and supported me

--

This was about half of a year ago, and basically marks my shift from being in the closet to being out and trans. Once I was back in the USA I could go through planned parenthood to start my medical transition, and put to rest my concerns over testosterone caused balding. My mother had told my father s couple months before I arrived, who really didn't care about the whole thing. well, it seems he doesn't care, it also seems he doesn't understand what being trans means, as the first time I had gone out in full fem he apparently told my mom he was shocked and didn't think I meant doing THAT, like that he expected me to just keep acting masculine but ask to be called a woman?

I got my meds on may 27th 2022. thats the day I call the start to my transition, and second puberty. I don't look forward to all the body awkwardness, but I sleep happy now knowing that body wont grow me into a man with age, but a woman. and thats a fear I never could express before, growing up into a man, I was actually afraid of that, and now I don't have that fear. its amazing

I kept doing laser hair removal on my face, in all likelyhood most of the hair is gone but I feel like it isn't and like the laser hair removal didn't work. its very frustrating, but there isn't anything I can do about it. I plan to have the same done to remove the hair on my chest.

at some point while being in the USA I began going by Amber more often, which I had to gradually shift to, as my mother had had some serious problems with me not going by my birth name. I feel like it was a milestone when I got my nametag from work "Amber" it says, and it makes me smile.

I've been getting used to being treated as a woman, which is certainly a change. when online if you say you're a woman generally you just get harassed or hit on. in real life, um, well okay this still kind of happens, but all my interactions are different. its strange feeling getting comments about how "its nice to know a woman getting into programming" or "its really cool that you're a girl who plays videogames" because normally these things would never be commented on.

what sucks now is the fact that men expect that I am interested in them, and that women expect that I'm not. I now totally understand why queer people kind of project a presence to communicate that "hey, I'm gay" because I'm going to lose my mind if another guy thinks I'm interested in them. I'm generally really friendly and comfortable with guys, since I'd been socialized to just find it normal to be super casual with guys, but what thats translated to is me coming off as a woman whose really interested in what guys have to say. I don't know how I come off to women, I can only hope for the best. in my mind everyone sees me as a guy, actually before transitioning I forced myself to be okay with the possibility that everyone would see me and instantly know.

I think I did the wrong thing by doing that, because it hurt my ego, made myself feel unattractive, and as it turns out most...? or many people just assume I'm a woman and was never a man, which thank god, I'm lucky, that's exactly what I want, but I was prepared for everyone to know instantly.

I went on a cruise recently with my mother, during which I attended an LGBT+ meeting group, the men there were very accepting and kind. its actually because of a gift and a letter I got from one of the men there that I made this blog post. also I say the MEN there as it was only gay men who showed up, hahaha, I was expecting that maybe ONE lesbian could be there too? but nope, it was just me. and I still was incredibly happy to be there, no one knew I was trans until one of the last meetings. the whole time I had just assumed they all knew I was transgender, but as it turns out they all just thought I was a typical lesbian woman.

I really miss being there, I learned a lot about what its like to be a gay man, there are parts of that world I really knew nothing about. I think because of that I am going to make a point of being at more LGBT places.

A man there, Jon actually made and sent me a beautiful ring, that I'm actually wearing while typing this. it was a sentence in his letter that he sent along with the ring that inspired me to make this post. 

it hasn't been long since then, and so I don't suppose I don't have any thing to say about my transition since that point. I now regularly go out and live my life as fully as a woman as I can. I don't have legal documents that reflect this unfortunately, its a pain int the ass to change an M to an F on a formal document, so I'm not going to bother, at least not for a while. it means I'm going to have to be openly trans to anyone who IDs me.

before I end this post I'm going to link to the UStrans survey, which is a survey all trans poeple should take if they live in the United States:

https://www.ustranssurvey.org/

and with that I suppose, thank you for reading, feel free to comment any questions you have about anything I mentioned or forgot to mention. I'm an open book.