comfortable with yourself either. Act how you might normally act around finding a new guy friend.
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-GRADE 7 (12 years old for European reference)-
Grade 7 was the best year of my life. I met new friends at my new school (who are still my best friends to this date), after being abandoned by all my old ones at the end of the year prior. I was Cody. There was also a girl, Brea, who I instantly really loved, though something about it didn't seem right. I was completely and totally obsessed with her, but I wasn't "attracted" to her, even though she was beautiful. Throughout the year, it only became stronger, to the point where I secretly took a picture of her, printed it, and put it in my drawer. Every day I wrote the words "I want to be with you" across it in small print, then whispering every repeated line I had written aloud, each day, progressively filling up the page, my rituals eventually taking up to an hour. One point in the year, she doesn't show up in school, and I think "oh, that's odd, I guess she's just sick. I'll wait til tomorrow." She didn't show up the next day, or the third. I started to feel anxious after the third, because the teacher said they couldn't reach her (it went straight to voicemail) and there was never any notice given. By a week, some of her actual friends didn't know what was up either, and one had tried to visit, and she reported that nobody was home. Finally after the second week, she came to school on Monday. I was so afraid I was going to lose my mind, because I repeated my ritual at home two, three times a day. When I saw her though, she was different. She turned into a complete conformity and gave into peer pressure. At that point I felt a stab in my chest so hard that I was sick for the next two days, and while sick I began writing a piano song to express myself, but at this point, with my technical level 8 piano, I was able to play quite well, but I never had much experience in composition, so I lacked the skills to both play and finish the song, as I was trying to do things in music that I both didn't know if they would work, and I just plain couldn't play them. I was so utterly confused at why I felt so much for her, even though I rarely talked to her. What was with me? At this point I took note that I hadn't had any sexual thoughts so far.
-GRADE 8 (13 y/o)-
My mom (I barely have a dad) had this crazy notion of sending me to an all-boys Catholic school (with uniforms), even though my mom's only lightly Christian and I'm an Atheist. It was just as bad as I thought it would be. As soon as I get there, people instantly started picking on me, and I wasn't sure why or what it was. I had never been the "little pushed around kid" (I was actually a certain group's target in grades 1-6), though I was never exactly known for being "cool," whatever that meant. People constantly punched, shoved me around and beat me, probably because it was a heavy sports school, and I never was able to get a word in. Every lunch time and free class time people are, on a probable average frequency of every 5 seconds, making sexist jokes or "telling stories about how much they've had sex" (which were clear to me, lies, as it was obvious girls would never act like how they portrayed them. Even the truthfully ugly boys called themselves sexy). I felt as if I were the only one of the school who didn't join in. Because of all this consistent sexist talk, I began to feel attracted to girls, though it never felt real. It felt forced. I made a few sort-of-friends, but they still did all the things I hate. This is the exact opposite of an art or music school. All the football players talked like stereotypical punks saying things like "yo man, where da fuck do you think you're goin'? Get back here right now and I ain't gonna whoop your ass more than little."
Keep in mind that through this whole time I still was utterly obsessed with Brea and I committed to the rituals every day.
-GRADE 9 (14 y/o)-
Worst. Year. Ever. I found out that one of the reasons people picked on me was because I never acted sexually and I always took offense to highly discriminatory jokes, though I did little more than say a word or two in response, if anything more than a facial expression. The only spark I gained in this year was that I found another solemn pianist, as well as a closer friend. The rest of the year was bombarded by more violence than ever, much more so on the verbal side, but also somewhat on the physical side. It had become a fad to, every time people see me, say something like "hey skinny, you killed yourself yet?" and "You're a worthless piece of shit on my shoe," and so on. On time during Science, the class took place up on the half-roof (sort of like a one-story roof, then next to it the full three-story roof), and we had to pick multiple maple leaves to press, and we were put into groups of four. Since everyone else in my group wasn't doing anything at all except moving to the side and chatting, I went up and started picking leaves. Right as I was up on my toes reaching for a big, nice leaf, I feel a jolt and I'm being pushed by the group of four people towards the roof's window wall, and they send me right through the glass, and I fall about five or six feet, both my legs dislocating by hitting broken desk in the vacant, unused classroom. At this point, all I noticed was that there were massive cuts and flesh wounds all over my body that were bleeding (including a few nice and visible cuts on my face and neck), and that I felt as if I just had woken up from a 1000 year-long sleep. Of course at this point some people helped me and called first--aid, but what sane person can convince four people to push someone through a high window from a roof? They got suspended for one day. That's it.
Some of you who knew me back in 2009 might remember that I was quite weird.
Now for a little bit of a transition here, there was a family trip to Mexico planned for this year-end 09 and Winter 2010 (during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, which is where I live). In the short time I had left before I went to the cab to the airport, I had to make one more stop to fulfill my Brea ritual (by this point I was still obsessed with her). I wrote out nearly my 800th line on the pack, and I read "I want to be with you, I want to be with you, I want to be with you, I want to be with you, etc...). Because I was in such a hurry, I didn't realize I had made a writeo (mistake?) in my very last line. As I read the last three "I want to be with you, I want to be with you, I want to be you." Right there I froze for some reason, completely in shock. [i]I made a funny writing mistake. What's so bad?[/ii] I thought. But then I found it was a happy feeling, something I hadn't felt since I was a kid. I had not felt the feeling of remote joy for so long, that I said it again. Again I felt happy. I had not the first idea why, but I felt happy, happy, happy! every single time I did it.
I thought about it: [i]why does making me say that I wish I were her make me happy? I'm not a girl anyway, why would I like that?[/i]. These thoughts happened throughout the car ride to the airport and the entire plain ride to the Yucatan. Even as we were in the bus, riding to the hotel, I continued to think until it hit me. I remembered a shunned thought from back in pre-school (that was located in a church) when I had just turned four in 1999. The first day was just an introduction, where I already met a friend named Sasha. She was creative and fun, just like how I wanted to be, even though back then people's thoughts were relatively simple. She was the one who gave me the inspiration to start piano lessons, because I already showed so much interest in it. On the second day they introduced the slipper system, where you needed to wear slippers instead of shoes. Sister O'brian, my teacher, who was also a nun, showed us with a smile: "Boys put their shoes in the blue cubby, and girls put theirs in the pink." So I went right up ahead with Sasha and I holding hands to put ours in the pink cubby. The teacher held my arm and said "no, that is the girl's cubby, the boy's is over here," and she turned me toward it. I then said "but I'm a girl." She replied "no, you're a boy." "No, I'm a girl!" "No you aren't Cody, you're a boy!" And it went back and forth until I was screaming and she had to pull me into the confessional and lecture me.
I remembered how I didn't even realize I wasn't a girl until I was four and how it made me feel. I tried to imagine myself as a girl, and my jaw dropped at the sheer image. I pictured my face on Brea's, and I smiled like there was no tomorrow. It fit my profile perfectly! It was me! But then I suddenly felt sad, because I realized that I had pretty much no real childhood. I remembered how fake it all felt when I compared it to what I was feeling at that moment. Throughout the rest Grade 9, I pictured myself as a girl, my name being Brea, and nothing else. This is around the same time I changed my gender icon on PC to the female one. So I hid this from everybody, through the end of my emo school year and through Summer.
-GRADE 10 (15 y/o)-
I can't believe I let myself go back for another year of torture without so much as a few hints towards my mom. When I started school however, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the assholes had leveled out, and some even became my friends. There will still some, but none at the magnitude of which the middle-school ones were. I still hated the school, but I actually didn't consistently think about killing myself. It wasn't so bad! In short, this was a much better year at the school than I could have come close to expecting. It wasn't that great by any means, but if you compare it to the last two years....
Then came the fateful day. On September 18th 2010, I was forced to mature in every aspect, and suddenly all those ridiculous things you hear happening to people became all to much a reality. On that night, it was a long weekend, and a rave party from one of my best friend's school. (I actually created a thread topic about this in the off-topic section, and it's still there a few pages back (it's where I had said feminist thoughts). I remember that some of you, even across the world had heard about this in the news.) I logged onto Facebook that night and saw an interesting post on her Facebook wall. I opened it, and at first I thought it was one of those stupid uploads with people joking around at parties and whatnot, but then I see some violence. She falls against a cabinet after getting hit by someone. She tries to get up and they drag her outside, down the stairs and into the yard. She was violently raped by seven people that night, and she nearly died. Apparently the attackers had cameras, and as such they uploaded videos and pictures of it to Facebook. The video went viral on sites such as 4chan (which I found out the next day when her abused picture on the front page of /s/). She was in the hospital for two weeks, and then performed surgery. The only reason she lived was because two of her drama classmates found her on the side of the road, dumped in a bush. I threw up countless times, every time I thought about it. You may find this silly, but the Muse song "Unintended" was perfect for this situation, and it kept me and her alive when I tried to stop her from committing suicide. I then remembered the song I tried to write three years back. Since I had my full ARCT professional performers certificate (which means completing all the piano courses scoring a high mark plus a final performance examination with four judges, as well as taking all the theory/harmony/counterpoint/history music courses), I had the skill to complete it. It's called "Strangled Hope" (it's on my YouTube).
At that time, we shared everything with each other. I even told her that I was trans, the first person I'd ever told in real life. She told me that she knew Brea somewhat, and told me what happened, why she changed. According to my best friend here, Brea had been molested by her father for a long time, and it only got so bad in March 08 that she called the police and they literally dragged him to prison, and he threatened to kill her. That police officer then adopted her.
My friend finally had the courage to go back to school a month and a half later, only to be completely bombed with terrible questions and comments. "Make way for the slut! We need to let her huge pussy through!" and "Hey whore, I bet you liked it, I know I would," and "You were asking for it just by showing your sweet ass up." What provoked people to respond like this is unbelievable, and it caused her to move to Arizona. She had a lot of friends, many who had turned on her, and she wanted nothing to do with anyone who put her down. I still Skype chat with her sometimes, she's doing better thankfully, though it took a load of talking to make her pull through.
Using all that, I mustered up the courage to tell my mom in early November. I've been taking hormone blockers since December, and Estrogen since April. Now I'm in my new music school and I couldn't be happier! Also this is obviously grade 11 now.
Sorry, it's humongous, so I put it in a code box. Unfortunately it's not easy to describe any shorter without missing some important details. A one-paragraph skim doesn't really give the right impression.
One more thing I wanted to say that you've misconceived, is that it isn't an operation. It's natural hormonal growth done by canceling out the unwanted hormone and replacing it with the opposite one, in this case replacing Testosterone with Estrogen. It does everything except change the organs down there (obviously), and that part it done through surgery. You've probably learned that it's "entirely one surgical operation" through TV, especially shows like South Park and Family Guy. You do not get breast implants, nor do you get anything else done. The only thing modified by surgical procedures are the organs, which give no outward appearance change in day-to-day life.
I was joking around iambored. I am not a feminist whatsoever. One time I let it out last year on the board, but mainly because there was a crapload of provocation, and it was a completely inappropriate time for provocation. Other than that, no.
I'll want your Friend accounts, guys!
