Letter to my parents

I wrote this letter my parents in early February 2001, about 8 months before I transitioned. I had just been to my first Seahorse meeting:

Mum & Dad,

I am writing this because I am having problems talking to you about things at the moment, I feel a bit uncomfortable with talking about this face to face.

Mum, you are obviously upset by the whole cross-dressing thing, and I can understand that. What I need you to know is that it is neither you nor Dad's fault that I am like I am. I feel and know that I am this way because I was built this way, and that nothing that you did during my upbringing did change or could have changed that part of me. I feel sad that I couldn't talk to you about it, especially since it has been such a major thing in my life since I was very young.

I wish I could express to you both how I feel at the moment, especially since I am so very confused about myself. I am beginning to feel that I am resolving some of the feelings that I have, the only problem being that it has opened up a whole new group of problems.

Since I was 7 (I think) I have been very self-deprecating, very unhappy with the way that I look. It would appear that the cross-dressing started to happen at the same time. I am beginning to realise that I have never been happy with the way that I look, and that I should look different. I am beginning to realise that I have wanted to look like a female, and that was the reason that I started to cross dress. As I have gotten older I have struggled with my self-image, never being happy with my “male” characteristics (body hair, physique, etc). This has lead to me doing things like growing my hair long for instance.

I originally thought that I was cross-dressing because I have wanted to be someone else, trying to escape from what I am. But upon reflection, I have realised that in reality, I have been trying to be what I feel like inside, that I have been repressing the real me underneath a layer that I have built up over the years to cope with feeling different and to escape the social problems with feeling the way that I feel. Right now I feel liberated because I am giving myself the opportunity to let myself be what I feel like inside.

I have gone to this Seahorse meeting that I mentioned to you the other day. The group gets together once a month, and you are basically expected to go dressed “en femme” as they call it. I thought that I would feel very nervous about going, about being in public dressed as a woman. What I found was that I was not nervous at all, and that it felt “right”. After the meeting we went down to St Kilda to a Coffee shop to have some food and drinks. I felt very calm, and even though I know that I don't “pass” as a women, I still felt really good about how I looked, and made me want to do it more and more.

Right now I am not sure where all of this is going, and what implications it's going to have on my life in the near future. I am trying to write this so that you know how I feel at the moment, and I suppose warning you that my life is going through a pretty significant change at the moment. I wish I felt confident enough to talk to you about this face to face, but I don't feel that I can at the moment.

I love you both very much, and I really appreciate all the support that you have given me with this and with Sherridan and my break-up.

Love,

Matt.

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