childhoods end

Some suggest the way a personality develops is a case of nature or nurture and that these conditions affect the way you turn out as an adult.

I must explain that with most that identify as LBGT are a case of nature, just how they are, how they feel and how they react.

As a Trans -gender person I knew I was different very early in life, I wasn't interested in rough and tumble and many of the games that the other boys played. I was quieter and reserved read books drew, and grew a very big dislike for violence. Most would have just called me soft but there was something else and this was helped by my best playmate who was my younger sister who I adored.

With only 2 years age gap we were very close, but I was also jealous of her. How she could dress differently, have a different hairstyle and every day look so pretty. While I was left with the same old male programming of how society thinks I should look clipper short hair short pants and t-shirt was the best I could expect or get.

I recall when I was around seven years old having  a nightmare that I was being forced to live as a boy for the rest of my life & I ran crying into my parents room for comfort, but wouldn't tell them what the nightmare was about. This nightmare never left me

My parents were very caring, but you also didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them. My mother had an extremely nasty temper that was easy to trigger (due to being mistreated as a child) and my father was quite mild mannered although this changed as he got older.

My older brother had learning difficulties but in the 1970's the education system did not recognise this.

It was always a case that he was forced into one organisation (Church choir, cub’s scouts, Army cadets) , good thing that my singing voice is a cross between the two Bobs (Dylan & Geldof !)

To ensure that he would stay out of trouble which my mother always feared, I feared that I would have the same sort of path.

As a child my health was not good convulsions lots of time off school and eleven weeks in hospital with pneumonia. I lost a great deal of school time and always seemed to be off with one ailment or another , and with my mum and dad working full time I had many hours on my own and I began to cross dress. First only something simple a dress of my sisters which I would wear for 20 minutes or so then hurriedly take it off , feel ashamed and promise myself I would not do it again . Only to repeat the whole process the very next day. This was probably how it was until I was around 11years old, very shy, not well socialised apart from playtime with my sister, and not very confident. By the time I reached by secondary school my father had made it his mission to toughen me up. This seemed to work on the surface, although I was still cross-dressing at every opportunity and getting better at concealing it. I didn't take to puberty well while my body was changing with the rush of testosterone into the bloodstream I longed for it to stop, so I could maybe become who I secretly was.

All the girls in my class were blossoming into young women, and while I was becoming someone I wasn't.

Still that was the way it was, and I felt totally alone in my inner self.

By the time I was 13, Rock music to my rescue, I loved the music, and as a fan could grow my hair out (parents did not approve!!) and become more and more androgynous. I was now playing quiet a lot of rugby and doing as many macho things as possible, but my female inner while suppressed would not go away and I dressed at every opportunity.

In 1980 BBC2 broadcast a groundbreaking series called a change of sex, which followed George on his journey to becoming Julia (Grant) who amazingly I got to know in later life, this I managed to watch in secret and it opened my eyes to what was possible. In my eyes there was Julia and I that had this problem, no one else.

I had started to drift apart from my sister, at that age it just wasn't done; she now had a large circle of friends, and had no time for her childhood playmate. She however had a rough idea, that there was something different with her brother.

We had both cross-dressed in role play in our early teens and she had noticed that I seemed to enjoy it more than her and didn't want to revert back to my male role.

In my teens I continued to dress in secret mainly late at night with whatever clothing I could acquire hidden even under the mattress or in the void behind the chest of draws, I must express although I got a rush from this, it was not sexual, more a relief to see the girl I should be looking back.