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Re: When did YOU know?

Mon, 19 September 2011 21:06

CarolynnL

Oh good,I hope our new folks will add to it.

I do wonder how many people have voted on the poll that are not registered members? I suppose there is no way to check. Can the poll be moved to the inner boards?

Re: When did YOU know?

Tue, 20 September 2011 03:25

Katie

CarolynnL wrote on Mon, 19 September 2011 18:06

The pole is open only to registered members. Anonymous participants can view the results, but cannot vote.

Re: When did YOU know?

Tue, 20 September 2011 05:52

Derrie

Katie wrote on Tue, 20 September 2011 05:25

CarolynnL wrote on Mon, 19 September 2011 18:06

The pole is open only to registered members. Anonymous participants can view the results, but cannot vote.

I was curious about that......there are SO many views but only just over 100 votes.

If you log out and view it anonymously you will only see the results. Hmmmmmmmmm

@ Carolyn
This poll CAN be moved but wouldn't you rather start a new one on the Inner Boards?
We could even tweak it to conform to your needs.

Re: When did YOU know?

Tue, 20 September 2011 07:43

sherri2780

Hmm It may be the same show I watched...It was the Phil Donahue show and I believe it was a panel of 5 women also....I honestly think that was the same show I watched in the 80's that triggered in me that this was what I am

Re: When did YOU know?

Tue, 20 September 2011 08:12

Cynthialee

sherri2780 wrote on Tue, 20 September 2011 07:43

After I saw that Donahue show I would watch everything I could that featured a trans woman for a few years, but I never would have darred look for the information in written media. What I read was monitored rather closely.

Earliest memory

Thu, 22 September 2011 08:48

Anonymous

I knew when I was about 2-1/2 years old. My mother recalled my speaking out about it at age 5. When I informed her when I was age 19 that I was considering transition, she said "so it never went away." We had a tense conversation about her recollections of me struggling with it from the very beginning.

Kate Grimaldi

Re: Earliest memory

Thu, 22 September 2011 15:49

Karen_A

Anonymous wrote on Thu, 22 September 2011 11:48

Hi Kate,

... Long time no argue!!! Wink

Take care,
- Karen

Re: When did YOU know?

Thu, 22 September 2011 19:35

CarolynnL

Hi Kate, and thanks for the input. It is nice to see you check in on us miscreants once in awhile! Nod

CarolynnL

When I was one and twenty

Fri, 23 September 2011 07:42

Anonymous

I heard a wise man say:
Give pounds and crowns and guineas,
but not your heart away
Give pearls away and rubies
but keep your fancy free
but I was one and twenty
no use to talk to me

When I was one and twenty
I heard him say again,
a heart given from the bosom
must never be given in vain
'tis paid with sighs aplenty
and sold for endless rue

And now I'm two and twenty
and oh 'tis true, 'tis true.

___________

No, I have not lost a love, nor have I loved in vain. Actually, I am fine in that department.

It's just that as time passes and I look back on my life, I see things differently.

Another poem, "Mid Way" goes something like:

So many, not yet here
So many, not yet gone

I was writing a historical account that fell to me as I am young enough to have the wherewithal to take it on, but old enough to have the perspective of the historic arc.

I looked to see what the principals, the senior actors in the drama, might be saying and to make sure I was not stepping on any toes. I was, to put it dramatically, shocked, to see how many had passed away.

The people who remembered the old me, are crossing the bar.

I listen to people in their 30s and even 40s, and they speak to "historic" events that I remember, first-hand. And surprisingly, they get it quite wrong. Someone recently said that a surprising number of people believe the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

A.J. P. Taylor speaks to this in his "Origins of World War Two," not that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, he knew better than that, but that his students saw what Taylor regarded as common experience, as historic. World War Two to them was as remote, experientially, as the Peloponnese War.

If we live long enough, time is on our side. Those who seem to have something to say about who we "really" are, fade away. Those not yet on the scene, or not yet born, have only who and what we are, to go by. The world shifts from one and twenty to two and twenty. That is, we give our little hearts away, hoping someone who is negative and has made up his or her mind about who we are, will change.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

One thing is, if we live long enough, the authority figures will pass into history, as we all will. In my case, I learned I gave my heart away, so to speak, wanting the approval and blessing of others.

Today, they are gone, hence I am two and twenty.

So September comes and it is autumn.

I think on the question of how long ago it all started and how damnably long it took to take action, the cost in friends, time, emotion, money, and opportunity.

It was the thing that didn't have a name that we recognized. I say that's what's underneath the question of "when." When did you know?" is a good question, but perhaps more to the point is "when did you give it a name?," as in recognition of what it really was. To me, the unthinkable.

If I only had a pill to make it go away, I would gladly have taken it. I would not wish this on my worst enemy. Some of us handle this a small children and learn to shut up. Others choose the mechanism of burying it altogether, until suddenly at an older age, it reveals itself. I know one person who suddenly realized in her 40s, while watch Geraldo.

In my case, at least, it got better and those who were nasty and cruel are no longer in my life, and many no longer in this world. A few have come back and changed their tune and tried to make amends, but mostly not.

Gay marriage, policies against gender variance, and other strides still happen amid the shootings and dust up over Chaz.

A famous scientist once quipped that: scientific progress marches part the grave yard -- meaning that the old established way of thing is displaced over time.

I trust many lives today have been saved, which a century ago would have been lived far less fully.

I pause there.

Kate Grimaldi

Re: When did YOU know?

Fri, 23 September 2011 09:09

CarolynnL

"A famous scientist once quipped that: scientific progress marches part the grave yard -- meaning that the old established way of thing is displaced over time.

I trust many lives today have been saved, which a century ago would have been lived far less fully."

It is certainly to be hoped.

CarolynnL

Re: When did YOU know?

Fri, 23 September 2011 09:39

Anonymous

I'd known something was wrong since my earliest memories. I just thought I was the worst thing ever born until about 1959 when I read about "Women who were once men living as housewives in Seattle". I think that may have been my most joyful day so far.

But it was only this year that I told another living soul how bad things really were.

Since that admission, my old coping mechanisms just don't seem to work. The wonder of all the possibilities is so new and marvelous. I just go rain or shine, as best I can; into what ever I have left.

Just Sayin'

Reciting: When I was one and twenty

Fri, 23 September 2011 09:55

Anonymous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOg2VCUosCM&feature=relat ed

I did not first hear this in school. I actually heard this in a Twilight Zone episode, "The Changing of the Guard," and his oration moved me today as much as it did at the time of the original broadcast.

The old teacher of English fears his lads have learning nothing and his life has been a waste; of spouting things that fall on deaf ears.

And I too was once, one and twenty.

Kate Grimaldi

Never too late

Fri, 23 September 2011 14:01

Anonymous

Just my opinion, but it is never to late to be true to one's self.

In my experience, the cost and loss were great.

A friend of mine (someone once called her a female Johnny Depp) said, "I knew it was going to cost me a lot, and I'm glad I did it, but if I'd know ahead of time what'd cost me, I would never have done it.

Talk about trouble.

Dr. Mom used to say: there is no cure, but there is a treatment that consists or HRT, RLT, and SRS.

I liked the idea of taking the blue pill and everything being right.

And yet, if I want to be a Seattle housewife, or even single woman living on her own out on Bainbridge Island, so be it.

You and only you have to live your life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLm9KX-LvMM

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