Growing up with gender dysphoria in the 80's & 90's

So lets start at the beginning, for as it was once sung, "that's a very good place to start". In my earliest childhood memories I always wanted to be a girl. I didn't really like to play with Barbie, or dolls or anything, but felt like life would be better if I was a girl. I did enjoy playing house, and always wanted to be the female rolls but was embarrassed about that, so I got stuck playing the dad normally.  When I was a kid in the 80's, girls had such soft and frilly socks. I remember loving to wear them, but had none of my own. So this lead to me stealing them whenever I got the chance. I knew stealing was wrong, and I knew it was embracing to be in girl socks, so I hid this to the best of my ability. I remember one time around the age of 4 finding some thick "fluffy socks" and stuffing them into my pants and "casually" walking through the living room past my grandma and mom to get somewhere private to try them on. I remember that they stopped talking and watched me walk by. In my little brain I figured I got away with it. In reality, I probably looked like my thighs grew some bulgy misshapen tumors.😂 I also remember in preschool graduation preparation, the preschool teacher teased that the boys would all need to wear dresses. She even went so far as to tell a few boys what color dress they would need to wear. Mine was yellow.  I entertained that thought and how embarrassing/amazing it would be as I pictured myself on stage in a yellow dress with a petticoat and puffy sleeves and frilly socks! It was the 80's after all. 😆

I remember seeing The little Mermaid in theaters when it came out and thinking I would gladly change places with the little mermaid so she could be part of the bipedal community and I could be a girl. It would have been such an easy fix for both of us!  Needless to say, the song "part of your world" has always had a different meaning for me. And not to age myself here, but I was only 6 when the little mermaid hit theaters. I also remember hearing about "sex change surgery" in about 3rd grade I was cautiously optimistic that there was something I could do! I remember one evening sitting on the front porch with my mom on a fact finding mission to discover if such a magical thing truly existed. To my disappointment I learned that it was not as thorough as I had hoped because they could do nothing about my height and girls are not as tall as me. At some point in my childhood I asked my mom what my name would have been if I were a girl. I was disappointed to hear it would have been Jennifer. I have a cousin named Jennifer... Gross! Fast forward to today really quickly and I realized Jen is an easy substitute for Ben.  And Jenifer the for mentioned cousin is one of the kindest, strongest, and funniest  people I know. so yes, In my teen years I thought up another name. But I think at the moment if I changed names it would be Jen... Now, Back to the timeline...

 I grew up in a very religious family in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons). So I quickly learned that my feelings were sinful and not in line with what God wanted for me. I needed to overcome this "temptation" and God would help me if I did what was "right". With the internet not being a thing yet, I honestly thought I was the only person in the world who was experiencing this "perversion". The leaders of the church would talk about homosexuality, masterbation, and gender being eternal. But nothing explicitly on wanting to be a girl, or wearing girls clothes. At the age of 11, I was at a sleep over with a person who still wet the bed. For reasons I don't understand today, this persons parents made him sleep with a feminine pad to help absorb the pee. I was intrigued... I helped myself to a pad that night and felt so feminine! That is when I realized there was more to feeling feminine than girly socks. The Green Day song "king for a day" became my anthem! Though I never agreed with the "wait till all the guys get a load of me" lyrics. And that made me think the song was making fun of gay people. And though I wanted to be a girl, I still defiantly found girls attractive. So even with that song in the world, I still felt like the only person wanting to be the opposite gender. Over the years I acquired female clothing from friends sisters and moms that I found attractive. This theft was justified in my head because I had a paper route and would leave money behind for what I assumed the clothing would cost. So aside from my stealing (because lets face it, even if I was paying what the clothing was worth... which I probably was not.... Taking something without the owners knowledge and putting money in its place is still definitely stealing). And the cross dressing at night, I was doing my best to live my religion to the letter!  

My parents caught on to my sleeping attire and got me into therapy for it around the age of 12. The therapy may have been able to help had I been honest, but not likely.  I was in the 90s and still thought I was the only person doing this or feeling this way. So naturally I lied about my motivations. And who knows what would have happened if I was honest. IT WAS THE FREAKING 90'S! Not the most friendly time for the LGBTQIA+ community (even though I would not consider myself a part of that community for 26 more years). The therapist told me I just needed to masturbate more. Of course at the time, My religion taught that sexual sin is next to murder in severity and that  masterbation caused homosexuality. So there was no way in HELL I was going to start that! 😆 And when I told my parents that was the advise I was getting they pulled me out of therapy. 😍 On my own, I developed the coping skills of always having heavy rock music (because it is super manly... duh), or some other activity like painting  little zombies, or playing video games to distract from the intrusive thoughts that were almost always there.  With me exclusively collecting from women I found attractive (unless I was in a pinch), I started to wonder if this was just a sexual thing for me because I wasn't gay, and only gay guys wear women's clothing. . . Right? 😖 I went through many cycles of collecting and purging my "sinful stash" as the years flew by. This was a cycle that would follow me for most of my life to this point. Though last time I did it right and purged my boxers (2 years or so ago)!