The story so far

My story starts off much the same as many other MTF transsexuals. As a small child, my friends consisted of the children of my mother's friends, most of whom were young mothers themselves. My best friend at that point was a girl, the same age as myself. We would often play dressing-up games where I would usually end up in one of her dresses. I also liked all the toys she had; dolls and suchlike. This seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Also in common with many others in my situation, I started to find out the hard way that this was "inappropriate", starting with the guffaws of laughter from our parents when they saw me in my friend's little green and yellow dance-dress. As I got older, I wasn't able to wear the pretty things my friends wore, and I got "boys" toys, such as space Lego. Looking back though, even though the lego was for building spaceships, I still used it in a very "girlish" way - I built the spaceships and then made up stories about the family of space-aliens who lived on them. Dolls-houses in space, if you will.

As I approached my teenage years, I realised that I was supposed to see girls and the things they did as "sissy", and although I tried to play with the girls as much as possible, I was becoming increasingly excluded from the things they could do. At the same time, I had lots of difficulties making friends with boys, so I became quite lonely and introverted.

At 11, I moved to a new school where I didn't know many people at all. This is around the age when the nature of the relationship between boys and girls starts to change quite significantly, with puberty approaching, and I seem to have become incredibly confused. I was incredibly interested in the girls, but seemed to get absolutely nowhere with them. Other boys were popular, but for a girl to associate with me appeared to be social death.

I didn't understand this at the time, but now it's obvious why this was. At that age, children are becoming sexually aware, and this colours the nature of the relationships they form. Most of the boys dreamed about getting those cute little summer dresses that the girls wore as uniforms off. I dreamed of getting one on. They wanted to be with a girl, I wanted to be a girl. The girls themselves probably just saw me as some sort of nerd or freak.

Throughout this time, I cross dressed whenever I could, always in private, always in fear of being caught, always with a sense of shame and guilt. I didn't know why I was like this, I thought I was "dirty", that there must be something wrong with me. Lots of teenagers are screwed up for a while, but I had a pretty horrible time even when that's taken into account.

Fast-foward to 1995, after I graduated from university. Until then, I'd tried to suppress my transgenderism - ignore it, hope it would go away. Of course it never did, and in the meantime I never managed to have a proper relationship with a girl. I left university at the age of 21 convinced that I was going to remain a sad tranny-in-denial virgin for the rest of my life.

Enter Sylvia - the woman who was to become my wife. I knew her at university - she was taking the same course as I was, but was a year below me. We knew each other socially as students, and got on well enough. We went to my college's May Ball together in my final year, but we were still just friends.

After I graduated, Sylvia took a summer-vacation job at the company where I had just started working as a software engineer. Pretty much everyone we knew had gone home, or was dispersed around the country in new jobs, so we hung out together. From there, things just sort of happened, and after a little social lubricant (of the alcoholic variety) got us cuddling, we became boy and girlfriend.

It was after we had been together for around a year that I finally felt I was able to "confess" my crossdressing desires to her. She was very understanding about this, and soon I owned some of my own nightdresses, which I slept in. I was still deeply afraid of the world-at-large finding out though.

A couple of years later, we became engaged. By then, I felt able to tell a few of my closer friends about my "perversion", and by the time we married in 2001, I had become confident enough for it to be something of an open-secret, at least amongst the people I felt able to trust. I started wearing dresses to parties, although would seldom travel in public like that. I was finally coming to terms with the shame and guilt I'd felt as a teenager, and realised that there was no reason why I should have felt that way.

After we married, I decided to try and take on a more feminine appearance overall. I let my hair grow, I started to use makeup in public, I had laser hair removal on my face and now wax my body hair. With the pressure of "relationships" off, I became increasingly able to make friends with women, to the point where I now have a close circle of girlfriends. We shop together, do hair and makeup, and generally have a good girly time. In many ways, I've come full-circle back to my childhood, where most of my friends are female.

I've now had around 4 years of being able to explore my transgenderism in an open environment, free from the destructive emotions of my youth, and increasingly I've come to the conclusion that it's not enough to present as female. I need to be female, properly. As I suppressed my crossdressing as a teenager, I kept the growing feeling that I was not just transgendered, but actually transsexual, to myself. I married Sylvia as a man, albeit one who was open with her about being transgendered, but she didn't sign up to be married to a transsexual, and I didn't feel it would be fair to inflict that on her.

It's funny, but when I was first "coming out", I found a joke on the Internet, which went like this:

Q: What's the difference between a transvesitie and a transsexual?
A: About 5 years.

The implication there was that transvestites are really just transsexuals who are still in denial. At the time I didn't believe this, and found it somewhat offensive. Perhaps the author of the joke had the last laugh in my case, but I still don't believe it's true in the general case, and I hope that's not an attitude I come to adopt.

Earlier this year, Sylvia said to me, unprompted, that I should have a sex change eventually, perhaps when we both had fewer elderly relatives around to give heart attacks to (practically-minded girl is my wife). Apparently I hadn't been doing a very good job of keeping what I now suspected was gender dysphoria to myself.

More recently, we've talked about this openly, and Sylvia is happy for me to seek medical help, leading to a sex-change. As far as I am concerned, she has the power of veto over this - my marriage is very important to me, but Sylvia seems happy for her husband to become her wife, and I am deeply touched by the support she is giving me.

For some time, my male persona has become little more than a facade, adopted for convenience. I've now come to the conclusion that pretending to be a boy, in order to get a quiet life, is dishonest and making me unhappy. A few weeks ago, I decided to make a clean break. I gathered up all my "boy" clothes, and put them in big plastic sacks (later, I'll work out what's still in good condition and send it to a charity shop - the rest will be thrown out). For the last few weeks, I've been living exclusively as a girl, and I love every minute of it! I now find the idea of dressing like a boy to be quite distasteful to me.

With all this in mind, I made an appointment to see my GP a few weeks ago. I was apprehensive - I'd read lots of accounts of how unhelpful the NHS can be to people with gender dysphoria, but I was hoping for the best. I turned up to see a doctor who I hadn't seen before. I was wearing a smart skirt, a lilac top and suede high-heeled boots. On entering the doctor's office, the first thing he said to me was, "How can I help you, sir?". Not a good start.

I sat down, Sylvia was with me. The conversation went like this:

Me: I think I am gender dysphoric - I think I have always been, and I've done what I can by myself to deal with this, but now I feel it's right to seek medical help.
Doctor: Go on.
Me: Well, I'm hoping for a referral to a gender dysphoria clinic.
Doctor: What's gender phoria?
Me: Gender dysphoria.
Doctor: Yes, gender phoria. What is it?
Me: Well, I think I'm a transsexual.
Doctor: What would you like me to do about it?
Me: I was hoping for a referral to an NHS gender dysphoria clinic.
Doctor: What would they do about it?
Me: Well, hopefully they'll start me on hormone treatment, working towards sex change surgery.
Doctor: I don't think that's available on the NHS.
Me: I know for a fact it is. The details are on the NHS Direct website.
Doctor: Er, well, I'll have to talk to one of the partners about this. Someone will write to you.

We wrapped it up there, went home, and I cried for a bit. Spent the weekend doing more online research, read more and more horror stories about NHS treatment. Finally decided that the correct course of action was to arrange an appointment with Dr Russell Reid and get things done properly.

I phoned Dr Reid's surgery, only to be told that he's retiring soon and is not seeing any new patients. However, Dr Curtis has been mentored by Dr Reid, and would I like an appointment to see him? I agreed that I would, and after everything I'd read about Dr Reid, I must admit that I was disappointed to hear this news. I didn't know anything about Dr Curtis, but if Dr Reid has mentored him then I still thought there was reason for optimism.

Over the next few days, I discovered that Dr Curtis himself is an FTM transsexual, and I like most of what I've read about him (with the exception of a vile and hateful editorial in The Times). I'm hopeful that things will go well. If anyone is able to understand how I feel about my gender, it'll be someone who's been through this himself, alebit in the other direction.

In the meantime, I received a letter from my GP's surgery asking me to go and see one of the partners, which I did a couple of days ago. It turns out that the doctor I saw initially was a locum. The partner GP was much more helpful and understanding (but still called me "Mister" Brown - we'll have to get that sorted out). I told him about my decision to take the private route, and he seemed to think this was a good idea - it seems he shares my lack of confidence in the NHS to be able to handle this in anything other than geological time. We discussed prescriptions and potential blood tests - I now feel a lot better about approaching them in the future.

Appointment with Dr Curtis is tomorrow afternoon. I'm really excited and can hardly sleep. Let's hope he can indeed set me off on the path to becoming the woman I know I should be.