One of the things people ask me time and time again is, “how did you start your transition?” So, here’s my story on admitting to yourself, this is who I am and why it was really important to me.
Personally, I have known pretty much all my life that I am mentally a woman but it took lots of sessions with a Psychotherapist for someone else to say, “You are transgender”.
It then took me more time and a lot of internal soul searching and decision making to further say “before you can move forward in life you need to not only accept this and then decide what you wish to do with the information presented to you”.
It took me rather a long time to actually say to myself. “This is who I am” and “This is who I want to be in my life”.
I sat and thought about my diagnosis and it was good to remember that there has been a lot of things in my life which you could say were over compensations for “wanting to be more manly”.
Mainly macho things to prove I was more of a man because at the back of my mind all the time there was this desire to behave, dress, and present as a woman. Sometimes a strong desire and other times less.
I think about some of the things I did in my late teens and these really were “I’m a man” moments. Things like jumping off the highest cliff faces, first of all locally, then in places like the Vivian Quarry in Llanberis. Swimming across open sea bays, climbing Snowdon numerous times in a day, riding motorbikes at ludicrous speeds, and taking risks driving cars to the extreme. Yes, they brought me short-term blokish feelings but this was always short-lived. I wasn’t an adrenaline junkie as all the times I did these things I was always scared in the back of my mind.
I grew up in a very female-orientated environment with a large number of female cousins, aunties, and extended female family. It also wasn’t unusual to be left with groups of female cousins when I was younger and we played dress-up and make-up quite a lot.
In my early teens, I was told to stop all that as they were girls’ things and not boy’s things. I stopped publically but behind the scenes, I continued to dress and practice makeup until I was in my late teens when I moved into my first flat on my own and I dressed feminine when I was at home. Even pretending to be out when my parents turned up at my flat as there was no way I could get changed in such a short time.
Thankfully I never gave them a key and them turning up unannounced did send a shock wave down my spine.
In hindsight, I wish I’d answered that door on that day and possibly started my transition earlier.
I met someone in 1989, I had known her for quite some time before this and very quickly we started a relationship and I told her about my crossdressing. She said she thought it was a bit weird and didn’t want me to do that. I went out with her for 3 years and I didn’t dress anymore but it did cause me mental issues as I did have anxiety and sometimes I really struggled with this. In 1992 I watched her die and this put me into a tailspin for many years with alcohol and food abuse I ballooned in weight and almost became alcohol dependant! Dealing with death and my own mentality really screwed me up. Dealing with depression made things worse until a friend of mine said to me “If you don’t stop doing this you’re going to die and I don’t want you to die”
I stopped gradually, lost weight, and sorted my life out but the need to dress and act was always there.
In 1997 I met a wonderful woman and we married in 1999. I won’t go into details of this but for the first 10 years, we had a great life.
But I started to get feelings again that there was something wrong with me and in 2009 I spiraled into anxiety and despair. I spoke to my doctors at this time but I might have well as sat in the car park and talked to a brick wall. I’d like to say things have changed but alas in 2021 it’s still like banging your head against a brick wall.
At this time my wife went to visit her parents for a time and during this period I was able to dress as I wanted and this helped me immensely. Something I was able to do over the next 6 years on a regular basis.
My marriage drew to an end, not because of me being trans or crossdressing.
After nearly 18 months of therapy, I received a diagnosis that I was Transgender.
After being handed this information I struggled to digest it for quite some time wondering what to do next with this information.
Part of me was relieved, part of me was excited and part of me was confused. It was several months before I actually sought help again to deal with dealing with my diagnosis.
Again I paid for this as mental health services are almost as bad on the NHS as they are for Transgender services.
My doctor turned into a necromancer and wanted to fill me with pills and potions, because of this I decided to seek medical help myself and spent hours trawling the internet, Facebook support groups, and talking to other trans people before I sought the help of a trans specialist.
However, the best support and help came from my friends who were willing to listen, and offer advice if possible.
As 2019 came to a close and 2020 started I started to dress more and identify more as a woman. I chose to dress as a woman in public and with the help of the people of the Gay Village in Manchester, my friends, and others in the trans community I transitioned and by February 2020 was identifying fully as female and by April of 2020 all my friends, customers and acquaintances knew about my transition.
Since April 2020 I have identified as a Woman and I am so much happier and my life has been enriched by doing this. I’ve fully embraced who I am now. It has been said to me by customers, that they actually like me coming round and before my transition had been thinking of replacing me. Mainly, because they never knew what they were going to get before. Happy or sad. depressed or agitated! Because of my transition, I now have a better relationship with many of my customers.
So what does this all feel like?
Well, this is hard to describe so I’m going to use an analogy. Imagine you’ve been playing a video game for years and you’ve been walking around collecting endless items then you walk through a door and suddenly all those items turn into powerups, your character turns from a depressed arsehole into a princess and the game suddenly gets better.
My life is very different from my past life, but my new life is one where there is much merriment, lots of friends, and most of all someone who is happy.
Sure I have wobbles every now and then but they are normally caused by external forces like dealing with the NHS.
I am happy in my life, I’m happy with my life, I’m happy I am Mikki
